An American in London
by cielowriter
Summary: An American exchange student falls in with the detective duo to track down a terrorist organization. Hijinks, betrayal, and angsty snarkiness follow. Sherlock/OC
1. Chapter 1

Viola allowed Aunt Hudson to slip a hand onto her shoulder and guide her through the doorway. She could barely believe her nose, or her eyes. The apartment smelled like smoke, but it looked like a surreal British mish-mash of a Gothic novel modernized to 2012. It felt cozy, in a dark, detective-novel kind of a way.

Viola's mother had gone to high school and university with Aunt Hudson before moving to the US for graduate school. She knew her better than she knew her actual, blood-related aunts. She hadn't even distinguished them until middle school, when her mother remembered to let her know that Aunt was an honorary title.

"Boys," Aunt Hudson trilled. "This is the darling goddaughter I've been telling you about. My honorary niece. Vi, this is Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

The two men looked up, the blond one from a leather chair, and the long one from his place reclining on an equally leather couch. They did not look like Aunt Hudson had told them anything about her. They did seem faintly surprised to see her there, puzzled at to her existence and physical encroachment on their apartment floor.

Come to England to stay with your aunt, they said. It'll be fun, they said.

Vi pressed her lips together into a smile and tossed a single wave their way. The shorter one recovered quickly. He braced his cane against the hardwood floor and pushed himself upwards. Vi extended her hand to take his as he approached, and his palm was warm, but dry. No wonder. It was dark and rainy outside, dry and gloomy inside, which that candle-lit yellowness over all the furniture.

"Pleasure to meet you," he said, like people did when they were being polite. "John Watson."

She looked over Watson's shoulder at the tall one (Sherlock obviously), but he had turned his attention back to his book. How could he be reading with such dim lighting? Her mother's voice came back to her: Don't read in the dark, Vi. You'll go blind.

Bullshit.

But then she became the first person in her family to need glasses. The first year of high school, too. Sometimes she thought that she had "done herself in," as her detective novels said. Her eyesight, anyway. Three generations of 20/20 vision, and then her.

Her bad eyesight lasted forever, but glasses only continued between ages 14 to 15. Glasses didn't transform her into a charity case in need of the popular kid's rehabilitation techniques, and contacts didn't turn her into a confident beauty, but the switch did prevent her brothers from stealing her glasses and laughing when she squinted around the house.

It was no wonder that Aunt Hudson only invited her. The others were idiots. Idiots in med school with no time for travel. Vi, on the other hand, was majoring in history and needed cheap accommodations for her senior year abroad to study it elsewhere (anywhere but North America, she told the Career Office.)

She welcomed the change. Down with the tiny New York apartment, and up with the free English flat. The foldout couch was, well, a foldout couch, but it was soft with a warm tartan blanket, and her aunt served copious amounts of tea. It was as if she had fallen into one of her Agatha Christie novels.

"It was the cousin," a deep voice came from the couch.

"What, dear?" Aunt Hudson said, and squeezed Viola's shoulder.

"The D'artagnan's cousin killed him," Sherlock said. "And stole his identity him. Then framed him."

"Oh, are you reading the book I lent you?" Aunt Hudson said. "How was it?"

"Predictable," the voice drawled. "I'm on the tenth page. Maybe John will find it more amusing."

He threw the book onto the chair and Watson turned back to Viola with a grim smile. He was right, she knew. She'd suggested the novel to Aunt Hudson, and it was one of her favorites, one of those popular soft-cover mysteries that played on classic fiction and inserted mysteries where there hadn't been before.

"How did you guess from the first ten pages?" Viola said. "I thought it was pretty surprising."

Sherlock looked over at her.

"American."

"Uh, yeah," she said. "I am."

"About 21, 22, maybe closer to 22, in her senior year at university, based on that Columbus Society, Class of 2014 sweatshirt -"

Watson got this look about him, like a put-upon housewife.

"Sherlock," Watson tried to stop him.

"- and doesn't try very hard based on those dirty converse sneakers - doesn't care or doesn't feel like there's a point. Pony-tail, jeans, low maintenance. Likes mystery novels, obviously, but you're not a great lover of classic French literature, based on how willingly you read books that corrupt it. You care more about facts, plot - events - than good writing. You weren't one of those students who loved both English and History in high school. Terrible taste in writing, typical taste in plot. You read a lot of bad mystery novels, which you find in the same stores where you pick up your toothpaste. You never liked good books, although you tried. You've come to terms with mediocrity."

Viola could feel the dismay coming in waves from Watson and Aunt Hudson. Her Aunt's hold on her shoulder tightened and Watson looked at her as if he expected her to go over there and slap the presuming smartass turd. Which this guy definitely was. Then again, he was also completely right. What's a crappy mystery reader gonna do?

Viola breathed laughter out of her nose and tucked her hands underneath her arms.

"Oh man," she said. "That was spot on. That last bit was a little negative, but good otherwise. How'd you do that?"

Sherlock stood with the expression of the least-flattered man in the universe.

"I'm a genius," he said.

His phone buzzed and he reached into his pocket for it. He was dressed in a maroon button-down and nice black trousers with a crease down the center of the legs. Good for him. He dressed like a wealthy adult male.

"What?" he said into the phone, and paused a moment to listen to the answer before striding to the door and grabbing his wool coat. "I'm on my way."

"Ah, Sherlock?" Watson called after him.

"Come along," Sherlock called from the hall.

"Again, pleasure to meet you, Vi," he said, then grabbed his own coat and headed through the door.

The door to the street shut first after Sherlock and then again after Watson.

"Wow, Aunt Hudson," Viola said. "You know what, let's forgo the tea today. I could use a cup of coffee."


	2. Chapter 2

"Take the trash out, would you dear?"

Viola smiled at Aunt Hudson over the empty cups of breakfast tea.

"Sure thing."

She pulled the bag from trash. She knotted the bag at the top of the stairs and bounced down them to the front door. Viola twisted the doorknob and opened the door to a lukewarm breeze.

Ah, yes, the smell of relatively fresh city air. The cars buzzing down the wrong side of the street. The drunk with his back against the last step. Not as pleasant. No one else seemed bothered by him making the sidewalk his temporary bed, or even interested. But then, they didn't need to jump over his sleeping body. She scanned him.

His dress-shoes reflected the bluish light of the early morning. Weird. That was when she recognized the wool coat and the curly dark hair pressed against the brown stone.

"Sherlock?" she called.

He didn't seem like the type of guy to get drunk and fall unconscious after a rowdy night at the pubs. A cold thrill passed through her stomach. Maybe he wasn't sleeping. She left the garbage bag at the top step and stepped over his midsection, one foot at a time.

One of his cheeks lay against the sidewalk. She crouched down and peered at the face in profile, but it was too dark to judge anything from his complexion. She put a hand a few centimeters away from his open mouth and waited. After a moment, a warm breath hit her palm and she sighed out her relief.

"Sherlock," she said, less urgent now.

No response. She grasped him by the lapels and tried hoisting him up. Oof. He went back down. Heavy for a skinny guy. She tried again, and this time she managed to get him propped against the steps. His head slumped to his shoulder. No bruises, no cuts. That was good at least.

The preferable method of waking him would be to avoid touching him altogether, which she had a feeling that he would despise this whole situation. but now that the homeless man had one person concerned about him, other people were glancing as they passed.

"Is everything okay?" a woman said.

"Oh, yup, yup, all good," Viola smiled, waving a hand. "Thanks."

Move along now, she thought. Nothing to see here, but an unconscious homeless man with impeccable fashion sense. The woman passed by.

"Okay, more contact necessary now," she mumbled, and fastened her hands around his lapels again. She shook him a little.

"Sherlock," she stage whispered.

She brought her mouth closer to his ear, where the dark curls hid the top crook.

"Sherlock," she said. "If you're not in a coma, wake up."

He groaned. Score. One more shake and he moved his head into a 90-degree angle. He rolled his eyes around, and then they came to settle on her face. He curled his lip, as if both confused and in tremendous hangover pain.

"Hey," she said with her hands still locked on his coat. "Not to alarm you, but what the fuck are you doing unconscious on this step?"


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock pushed himself up with a wince and Viola got to her feet, suddenly hyper aware of how much of his personal space she'd been invading. He brushed the hair away from his forehead with the back of his hand, as if angry that it existed. His forehead now shone with sweat.

"Where's John?" he demanded into the air in front of him.

She shrugged.

"Look, I just found you here. It's 6:30 in the morning. I only know where you and I are right now."

He looked up at her.

"Open my coat."

"Why?"

He held his hands up and she saw that that the long fingers trembled uncontrollably. He gritted his teeth and spoke through them.

"Don't be slow," he said, and drew out each word. "Just do what I say."

She had the sudden urge to leave him to try it himself, but she bent down anyway and undid each button. Mostly out of curiosity. She glanced up at him when the coat hung open.

"What now?"

"Reach into the left side and feel if anything is in the pocket."

She did. She could feel the warmth of his body through the silky thin material of the maroon shirt, but it only caught her attention for a moment, because she felt the thin edge of an envelope inside the breast pocket. She pulled it out and turned it around. It said "Sherlock" across the front in elegant, tight calligraphy. It was unsealed and she slipped the letter out without permission, but Sherlock didn't protest.

"Should I re-"

"Yes."

She was too interested to take even silent issue with his tone. She unfolded the letter and read the words there. She blushed preemptively.

"Six days, seven nights,

That time lying together,

Enkidu had forgotten his home

Had forgotten the hills

After that time he was satisfied.

Then he went back to the wild beasts -

But the gazelles saw him and ran,

The wild beasts saw him and ran."

"Why are you blushing?" Sherlock said.

"I remember reading this in junior year seminar," she said. "Most graphic piece of ancient literature I've ever read. Gilgamesh."

"Good," Sherlock said, and pushed himself up into such a questionable standing position that Viola had to duck under his arm and support him on her shoulder. "You are useful after all."

"Jeez," Viola mumbled, still blushing. "Give it a rest."

"Help me upstairs."

She did, although it was a tight squeeze with both of them side by side. She fished the keys from his pocket and opened his apartment door, then kicked it closed behind them before leading him to the couch.

"What happened?" she said.

"I was drugged. But it's starting to wear off."

His hands had steadied enough that he could reach his pocket and dial a number. He lifted it to his ear and caught her eye, pointed to the door.

"You want me to leave?" she said.

He didn't dignify that with an answer. She walked to the door. What. An. Asshole.

She heard his voice just before she closed the door: "It's Sherlock. I need some information."

"Where have you been?" Aunt Hudson said from the table.

Viola closed the door behind her and joined her godmother at the table.

"With your snarky tenant," she said.

"Sherlock?" Aunt Hudson said with a smile. "Yes, he's an odd young man, but good underneath it all. He's quite well-known here."

"I know. I googled him," Viola said. "I think he might be a sociopath."

"Hm. Yes, dear. Well, I thought we might go to the Tower today. It is your last weekend for your classes begin, and you must play the tourist."

After the Tower of London, Aunt Hudson went shopping for a new pair of orthopedic shoes and Viola went back to the apartment by bus. Aunt Hudson saw her to the bus stop.

"Don't wait with me if you're tired, dear," she had said, and Viola took her at her word.

Sherlock was leaning in the doorway smoking a cigarette when Viola walked up to the building.

"Hey," she said. "How are you feeling?"

She glanced from his face to his hands, but he looked healthy and as unimpressed to see her as ever.

"I'm fine," he said. "Don't concern yourself."

Okay, you royal pain in the ass, she though to herself, and gave him a tight smile.

"Has John come back?"

He nodded.

"Upstairs."

"Great. I'll stop by."

She passed by him and he blow smoke into the wind, which swept around into her face. It burned in the back of her nose. She imagined a lodge with a roaring fire and deer heads would smell like that.

"By the way," he said, and she turned back to look at him. "Thank you for this morning."

She felt grateful for the comment, and gave him a smile over a shrug of the shoulder.

"If your landlady's American goddaughter won't wake you up from a drugged stupor, who will?"

"I meant about the poem."

"Oh," she said, and felt her face heat up.

Maybe her body would obey her mind one day. That day couldn't come soon enough. Sherlock turned his back to her and took another drag from the cigarette.

"Considering the rest of the story," he said. "That's not exactly the passage to blush at."

Argh.

Viola went in and knocked on Sherlock and John's door. John opened it, and Viola's jaw dropped before she could filter herself.

"Oh my god," she said.

Deep purple bruises covered his left cheek and closed one eye shut in an obscene wink. A vivid gash swelled on his forehead at his hairline, and another one swelled his bottom lip with a line of red. John gave her a wiry smile and raised his eyebrows down at the floor as if to say yes-well-there-it-is.

"Come in," he said, and stepped aside for her to enter.

She walked past, but never took her eyes off his face. The different angle showed a fresh gash along the back of his neck, just below the trimmed haircut.

"What the hell happened?" she said.

"Work," he said. "Just another day."

"Tell me."

He waited for her to sit down on the couch, and then he did.

John and Sherlock had been chasing a rogue terrorist for the last month, a psychopath. This guy liked to torture and kill a few men per month, just to remind the authorities that he was around, but then he got a hold of a government representative. That was the limit. The terrorist finally realized that he had a couple of detectives on his tail, and he decided to play a game. He left clues until Sherlock and John found him, and then offered to treat them to coffee in a public place. One that he rented out and filled with his people. Sherlock realized too late. By that point, he had drugged them both

Then he Sherlock at his own doorstep, and took John some place where Sherlock wouldn't find him too easily.

"I had no idea where I was," John said. "Or why I was there."

"What did he want to do?" Viola said.

"That story of Gilgamesh is a particular favorite of his. It inspired him. All the brutality and none of the art. The plan was to keep me down there with his men for a duration of six hours, and for Sherlock to wake up after the sixth hour he was unconscious," he said. "He would then have an hour to figure out the poem, and by the seventh hour, he would have given me a drug that made me paranoid and violent. Permanently. They tortured me so that I would wake up confused and in pain."

"Oh my god," Viola said.

"Without you, Sherlock might not have made it in time. You gave him an extra hour."

"How did he find you?"

"There was a moving Ancient Documents exhibit in a small library in central London with an emphasis on Mesopotamian literature. They were holding me in the storage basement. Sherlock got there just in time."

"Did you get this guy? The terrorist?"

"No. But we caught some of his associates. They might be able to help us."

Viola had dug her fingers into the sofa arm, and now she relaxed her grip. The muscles of her fingers hurt.

"Shouldn't you go to the hospital?"

John leaned back into his chair, stiff as a corpse.

"I went. No bones broken."

"Okay," Viola said, although she wasn't convinced.

"Did you see Sherlock on the way in?" John said.

"Yes."

John paused.

"He's smoking out there, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"He thinks I'm an idiot," John said. "No, he's probably just comfortable with the fact that I know he thinks I'm an idiot and I'm letting it pass. We'll see about that."

John stood with great effort and Viola stared at him, not quite believing that he was about to go out in his state and confront her roommate about his bad smoking habit. She stood too.

"Do you want some tea?" she blurted out. "I'll make some tea."

She hurried over and pushed him back down into the seat, and then went into the kitchen and filled the teapot with water.

"For a moment, you looked exactly like Mrs. Hudson," he said from the living room.

"You need a lot more rest than you think," she said.

He laughed. A few minutes later, she brought him a cup of tea and sat back down. Sherlock entered and walked into the living room.

"Called Lestrade," he said. "He wants us to come in tomorrow morning."

"Why not tonight?" John said.

Sherlock and Viola both stared at him.

"That should be clear, John," Sherlock said shortly, and went into his bedroom.

John stared at the floor.

"Do you have something against rest?" Viola smiled.

He looked at her with a half-hearted smile.

"My body wants rest every moment," he said. "It's my mind that needs to move."

Viola couldn't think of anything to say to that. Not anything that their distanced relationship allowed her comfortably to say.

"Well, I hope you sleep well tonight," she said. "You'll feel better tomorrow."

She said goodnight and went to bed early. She fell asleep right away.

She had two classes the next day: Ancient Roman Sociology: Ceremonies and Religion, and the Origins of Workers' Rights. They passed quickly. No one talked to her. One boy did ask for the time. She picked up a couple of textbooks from a second-hand bookstore after class, and then headed back to Baker Street.

She stopped at Sherlock and John's door and put her bag down next to her. She was about to knock when the door swung over. "For Heaven's sake Sherlock!" came from somewhere inside the apartment and Sherlock slammed into her. She fell backwards. Her arms flailed backwards and, without anything to break her fall, her head slammed against the wood.


	4. Chapter 4

The pain shattered through her skull, all her pride flooded out to clog in her head as if knocked loose by the impact. Tears stung in her eyes and she grasped her forehead as if to push back the bone tremor of shock.

Sherlock seized her forearm, tried to help her up, but she shoved him away. Nothing was worse than being touched when in agony. Viola propped herself up on one elbow and wiped the tears away with the back of her hand in one swipe. The pain throbbed in dull after-shocks, like waves of a migraine at the back of her head. Sherlock knelt and she looked at him: the crease between the dark eyebrows, the parentheses of concern around the straight line of his lips.

"Let me help you," he said.

He took her hand and they stood together. She felt the back of her head for blood, but her fingers came away dry.

"That was embarrassing," she said beneath her breath.

She avoided his eyes.

"How's your head?" he said. "Damage?"

The shock helped with the pain, but it didn't help much with the damage to her dignity.

"It's great," she said. "Hand please."

He let go.

"What's going on out there?" John voice called from inside.

"You better go back before he comes to the door," Viola said. "He's probably desperate for an excuse to move around."

Maybe Sherlock really wanted to go back in, or maybe he just wanted to get away from her, but he was already at the door before she finished speaking. He hesitated and made a half-turn back to her.

"Dinner later?" he said. "John would like it. I would too."

She paused, then realized she didn't have an excuse to say no.

"What time?" she said.

"Eight?"

"Sure," she said, and then she made her escape.

Back in Aunt Hudson's apartment, she took a bag of loose peas from the freezer and pressed it to the back of her head. She could already feel a bump growing beneath the hair and her hands shook. She hadn't wanted Sherlock to see her like that. At least John hadn't been there.

Aunt Hudson came home by seven, and gave her blessing for dinner Outside the Flat.

"How lovely," she said. "I'm so glad that you and the boys are getting along."

"Oh, yeah, we're besties," Viola said, but it didn't come out as sarcastic as it felt.

"What are you going to wear?"

Viola blinked. Um, jeans and a t-shirt. Sherlock's words cam back to her: "...doesn't try very hard... doesn't care or doesn't feel like there's a point ... low maintenance..."

Well, fuck that. She was going to try. And try she did. She let her hair down and wore a simple black dress. It was a v-neck, but it didn't show any cleavage, and she liked the gauzy black fabric around the skirt. She never cared for makeup, and wasn't going to change that, but she did put on a layer of lip balm for the sake of preventing dry lips and improving the appearance of health in general. Saving worldly hygiene, one face at a time.

Viola curtseyed to Aunt Hudson out the way out and grinned at the high-pitched praise when she shut the door behind her.

Sherlock answered the door when she knocked.

He scanned her, but didn't say anything. As always, she felt like he was computing a character report when he looked at her, looking for clues. She wondered what he had gathered and worried that she'd tried too hard.

"Dinner is already at the table," he said.

So was John. He didn't look much better. In fact, the existent bruises had become more colorful with time, and lesser bruises had started to unveil themselves.

He whistled.

"Look at you," he said. He smiled and she worried a second that he would re-split his lip.

"How are you feeling?" she said.

"Better," he said. "Much better."

"He's lying," Sherlock said.

"I'm not, actually," John said, specifically to Viola.

But he definitely was.

The dinner was short. John and Viola talked about her first days in London, the difference between soccer and football, among other insignificant topics, and Sherlock did his best not to look bored. Or too bored, in any case.

Viola had a feeling that life put Sherlock to sleep. She would hate to be like that. A terrible mystery was all it took to send a chill down her spine, and that didn't bother her.

At least he wasn't on drugs. Nicotine? Yes. Cocaine? No. God no. Not at all advised. That would be like the energizer bunny on crack: "Too slow, humans, too slow. Beep bop boop bop beep."

She glanced over at Sherlock, but he was already looking at her. Again with the analyzing. Viola opened her mouth on an impulse.

"I actually have some work to get done for class," she said. "Thank you for the meal. I'll ask Aunt Hudson if I can invite you both over soon. I microwave a mean burrito."

Sherlock stood as soon as she did and walked her to the door. She turned to say goodbye and saw that he held a yellow paperback in his hand.

"Got something for you," he said.

She took the book. The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie. It had one of those colorful 70s covers with symbolic squiggly geometric pattern. A yellow and pink snake slithered diagonally across a pea-green background. She drew a finger under the first page, feeling the crisp age of the paper. Christie's first novel.

"Thank you."

"I liked it," Sherlock said, matter-of-factly.

"High praise."

He smirked.

"You have no idea."

"Well, thanks," she said. "Good night."

The door shut as soon as she turned her back to it.

Viola didn't see Sherlock or John at all for the next few days. All the better to focus on classes, she supposed, but they were lonely days.

She exchanged numbers with a few kids from class, but only as insurance for possible absences. None of those relationships would last outside the walls of the university, if they even flourished inside them. She gave their names an estimated five-month lifespan in her phone.

But those few days alone did make her realize that she should make more of an effort. So she joined a student mystery-book club. The group met every Thursday afternoon at a café near the main school building. Viola texted Aunt Hudson that she might be late for dinner, why, and where she would be, then dropped by the cafe. It was small place, but popular, with round tables and cushioned chairs.

The club consisted of five regular members, all girls. The leader, Jennifer, wore a pastel purple headband and had the Daily Mail in front of her on the table.

"Did you ladies see the blog?" she said.

All the regulars spoke at once, squeals of relief that they had the same obsessions. Viola's ignorance about the source of the excitement left her in the minority of non-squealers (population one.)

"Viola," one of the other girls interrupted the uproar. "Do you know about the detectives for Scotland Yard? Holmes and Watson?"

The girls all turned to Viola with the same open-eyed receptiveness, as if waiting for her to ask, "What exactly are current events?" and "Who is Scotland Yard and where get I see him in concert?" England thought she and the United States lived in their own underground bunker of McDonalds, guns, and bad reality shows.

"They're in the news sometimes," Viola said. "Amateur detectives."

Jennifer exchanged looks with the brunette next to her.

"Essentially," she said.

"Holmes' blog says that they're not accepting new cases," the brunette blurted at Viola.

"They must be onto something really big," Jennifer said.

And that was just the beginning of the club. The girls theorized passionately over the possible reasons for the hiatus for the next forty minutes. Forty full minutes. There was only so much that Viola could take. Silently, anyway.

"Well, I've got to get going," she said .

"So soon?" Jennifer said.

Wasn't soon enough.

"I'll see you guys next week, maybe."

No way in hell was she coming back.

"Great meeting you, Viola," Jennifer said. "Have a nice day."

Kind of. She only got half way through that last part. She stopped at "nice," with her breath in her throat. Her dark eyes faded to a point over Viola's head and her eyebrows raised so high that they creased her forehead into long wrinkles that should not have existed on such a young girl.

Viola snuck a look behind her, but she couldn't see anything past the black coat behind her. She leaned to the left to get a better look around the person without much luck, and bobbed back into place. She tried the other way. Okay, couldn't this guy move? The cafe wasn't that crowded. She looked up to see the face of the self-involved bastard who belonged to the coat and her expression dropped.

"Hello," Sherlock said.


	5. Chapter 5

Viola choked.

"I can't believe it," a voice came from somewhere behind her, small and tinny as if from another room. No one else seemed to care except for Viola and the members of the club. The population of the oh-so-adorable cafe continued to chat in polite inside voices and sip their tea, coffee, and whatever else they happened to be drinking alongside various baked goods. The room smelled like hearths and cartoon fairy tales mixed with hot cocoa and ginger bread, and it fogged up the windows with happiness and cinnamon.

It all stopped at Sherlock. Long, dark, and wearing the usual expression of passive boredom. His eyes left Viola's and scanned the eager faces behind her, in all their lovely, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed glory, and he managed to look both mortified and annoyed in one expression.

He sprung a hand out and steered Viola towards the exit by the arm. He plunged towards the door and she flung her hands out, certain to feel cold glass against forehead at any moment. He pushed the door open before she made contact, then gave her a look, as if SHE were the one about to knock herself against glass. He released her when they got outside and cut into a quick walk down the street. She ran to catch up.

"Newspapers," he barked into the air in front of him. "The lack of anonymity is abominable."

"It was John's announcement of the haitus," she said. "But you're right, the newspapers don't help. Mind slowing down?"

"Yes," he said.

"What's the rush?"

Viola was the only one rushing. Sherlock was just walking briskly. The height difference between them certainly lost her some efficiency. Every time Viola thought she had matched his pace, he got just those few centimeters ahead of her and brought her once again at his heels.

"We're meeting John and Lestrade," he said.

"Do you need me for some reason? Not that I'm complaining about the interruption," Viola said. "I don't know if those girls were actually a mystery novel club as much as a Sherlock-John fan club."

"You'll keep up better if you stop talking."

Viola shut up. And he was right. She managed to meet his pace. Or maybe he had just slowed down, she thought, in attempt to make him seem less right all the time.

Sherlock made a sudden right turn into a small cafe, and Viola followed. The neighborhood consisted only of cute little places that looked essentially the same, and this would was just a more formal version of the last one. Instead of circular tables, it had booths. The clear windows were the same, but it smelled of meat and eggs instead of sweet and starchy baked things. The most obvious difference was that it attracted an older, more professional crowd, who wore suits and leaned leather briefcases against their seat legs.

John waved when he saw them. There was a man sitting with him. His hair grayed towards the front, but there was something boyish about his face. Maybe it was the large, dark eyes and that slightly stubby nose. He must have been adorable as a young man, and it was still there. Moreover, John must have been saying something amusing, because he turned to them still smiling. His eyes flicked to her, and he switched from a relaxed smile to a polite one. Viola gathered that Sherlock did not often bring young girls to their lunch dates.

John moved his coat so that Sherlock could take the seat next to him.

"Viola, Detective Inspector Lestrade," Sherlock said and sat.

John pulled a seat up from the other table and smiled kindly at Viola as she sat. Instead of making her feel better, it made her wonder exactly how obvious her discomfort was.

"Oh, yes," Lestrade said, and shook her hand over the table of sandwiches and coffee. "Mrs. Hudson's goddaughter, was it?"

"It was and currently is," Viola said.

Lestrade smiled, somewhere close to genuine amusement but nearer to politeness. 'Stop talking,' Viola told herself. She decided to drop the humor and tried to look relaxed instead. She felt somewhere stuck between forcing good posture and slouching down into herself.

"You needed an assistant," Sherlock said to Lestrade. "Viola is available."

Viola and Lestrade looked at each other to check their reactions to this news and accidently exchanged a moment: Viola's surprise for Lestrade's dismay. Lestrade looked back at Sherlock, and blinked twice.

"I thought we discussed this," Lestrade said.

"Yes," Sherlock said, as if nothing Lestrade had just said was in disagreement with his previous statement.

"Sherlock, I can't hire some 19-year-old study abroad student - I beg your pardon, Viola. It's not done," Lestrade said.

"And why not? You need an assistant and Viola gets off from class every night around 15:00 - or 5 PM. Let's just call it a part-time secretarial position. Assistant or secretary, flight attendant or stewardess, intern or slave, whatever you call it. I'd say eight pounds per hour? Isn't that about what skilless college students make in America, Viola? She's reliable, sensible, and somewhat above average intelligence. I'm sure she would be very satisfactory."

'Gee,' Viola thought. 'Thanks for that.' She hoped that the expression she directed towards Sherlock communicated her thoughts efficiently. Once she got over it, she thought about the eight pounds per hour. Wouldn't be so bad to have some pocket money. Her mother would certainly be happy about it. 'Viola,' she imagined her mother saying in the matronly trill that she took on in her imagination, 'You've shown very good sense in exploring career opportunities. I'm so pleased with your progress.' Her mother was a psychologist. She tended to bring her work terminology home with her.

"And you're her reference, are you?" Lestrade said.

"Don't be stupid," Sherlock said. "Of course I am. I am a brilliant judge of character."

John had so far sat through the whole conversation looking vaguely amused, and chose that moment to speak up. He leaned forward in his chair with one hand tucked beneath the other arm.

"He's right," John said. "She is very reliable and sensible. She would make a good assistant for the evenings. At least until you find a full-time employee."

"Well," Lestrade said, and looked towards Viola with the face of an exasperated man who had just reluctantly surrendered. "Is that something you'd be interested in?"

It's hard to turn down opportunities when they're pushed under your nose.

"Is it really eight pounds an hour?" Viola said.

"I would say more like ten," Lestrade said. "For a student. Does that appeal to you?"

Oh, the power of money. She extended her hand and Lestrade took it.

"Thank you for the job, sir," she said.

Lestrade left in one cab and Sherlock, John, and Viola flagged down one for themselves. Viola sat in the middle and held her bag steady in her lap with one hand and used the other to deepen a small hole in the faux-leather seat. She had torn a chunk out of it by the time she spoke up.

"So, sensible and reliable," she said. "That's a step up from low-maintenance and mediocre."

"One does not negate the other," he said.

Okay, great. Fine. She swallowed her self-satisfaction and reserved any snarky rebuttals to her own thoughts. She didn't think she'd get any points from 'you have the everyday comportment of a primate James Bond on speed.' She expected John to say something nice to reverse the effects of Sherlock's general lack of social skills, but he didn't. Tiredness, Viola reasoned. So much for cab banter.

Sherlock stayed back at the curb to pay the driver when the reached the apartment and John headed straight through the door. Viola was too slow and it shut in her face. She cursed under her breath and stopped to fumble around for her keys.

The keys seemed to have disappeared in her bag somewhere. Or maybe they were in her jean pockets. She patted around her waist. The front? No. The back? No.

"You check your pockets like a man," Sherlock said.

Viola turned around, and Sherlock dangled the keys so close to her face that she bobbed back.

"Where'd you find them?" she said.

"Cab. You left them on the back seat."

She reached for them and he seized her chin with his other hand.

"What?" she said, and her voice hit a high nervous note.

"Stop moving."

She did, if only because of his tone. He reached back and tangled his fingers into the hair just above her ponytail, then proceeded to explore her skull with his fingertips. It felt like clinical version of the wash before a haircut, and it was reluctantly pleasant. The hair on the back of Viola's neck stood on end and her ears went hot. She wished her hair were covering them. So much for functional hairstyles. Viola tilted her head down, tried to pull away half-heartedly. Then his fingers reached the bump on her head, which actually hurt, and she shoved away. She lost some strands of hair in the effort.

"Jesus, Sherlock," she said. "Why didn't you just ask me if it was still there?"

She rubbed away the fresh pain with a hand and scowled up at him.

"You would've lied," he said.

True. But she felt vulnerable and didn't particularly appreciate the touching.

"Guess what you do when someone lies about themselves?" she said. "You deal with it."

Yeah, maybe the lack of eye contact lessened the affect of her ferocious scorn. She stepped back even further and leaned against the doorframe so that her body faced more towards the door than Sherlock. Evasiveness was her favorite coping mechanism.

"I'll tell John to look at it," Sherlock said.

"Thanks, but don't."

He stepped closer, and she stared up at him. What was he was he doing? He loomed above her, as if he was going to step right through her.

"The lock," he said.

"What?" she said.

"You are blocking the lock."

Her ears flamed hotter, if possible. She stepped aside quickly and he pushed the key into the keyhole and entered in one swift movement. She did her best to hide her ears with her loose hair.

"'Night," he said, without much ceremony.

One day. One day she was going to really kick his ass. Not physically, because he was way too tall. Or verbally, actually. But she was going to one-up him one day.


	6. Chapter 6

Viola ironed her clothing in the morning.

Normally she'd be in bed a few more hours on Fridays without class, soaking in the realization that she didn't need to take a harried shower or guzzle coffee before she melted down into a puddle. Not this time.

She'd woken up at 5 am with her heart racing and the back of her shirt soaked with sweat. The dream slipped away, but she remembered the feeling of desperate panic because it still hammered in her chest. Her typical nightmares were about things like marrying the elderly mailman or missing finals and dropping out of college. Whatever she had dreamt about last night had given her a tremor that made it difficult for her to hold her toothbrush when she brushed her teeth.

She only had one t-shirt she used in place of pajamas, so she took the opportunity to wash her clothes at the Laundromat two blocks away. Aunt Hudson had offered to take care of it some time ago, but the idea of anyone else doing her laundry made her uncomfortable. She preferred to touch her own clothes. She threw her clothes in a laundry bag over her shoulder and took the mystery novel that Sherlock had gifted her.

She slumped down in the chair in front of the washing machine, and the dryer an hour later, and got half way through the novel by the time the dryer buzzed. Sure, it was a good book. She enjoyed most novels by Christie. But what made it so special that even Sherlock had liked it? Maybe there was going to be some clever twist at the end.

Back in the apartment, Viola turned the radio onto FM and set the ironing board up in the kitchen. Hudson was out doing chores (she'd said as much in the note she'd left on the fridge) and so Viola felt no qualms pulling her shirt up over her head and looping it around the board. It was laundry day clothing, just a simple gray t-shirt over an equally gray bra, and she smoothed the hissing dryer over the cotton so that it felt hot and flat under her hand. She lifted it to repeat the action, and she happened to look upwards just as Sherlock turned around the corner from the door.

She shrieked and the dropped the iron on back of her wrist. She pulled her hand back against her chest and used the other hand to grasp for the t-shirt to cover herself. Sherlock moved past her in a flash and had a wet cloth against the back of her hand before she could back away into her room. She tried to turn around, buthe grabbed her by the shoulder. It felt intimate and strange, his long fingers touching the top of her back, fingertips to skin. He didn't seem flustered by her relative nakedness, or even interested, and moved a cold hand to her wrist to stop her from forcing it back to her body.

She looked up at him, but his eyes remained on her hand. He was as focused as if he were doing a surgery, his eyes slits, his eyebrows pulled together. He looked worried.

"You seem preoccupied," she said. "Anything you want to talk about."

"Don't concern yourself."

His voice was distant, but devoid of the usual briskness. Not this time anyway. Viola moved away, the shirt still over her chest. She shrugged.

"I'm tempted to be concerned," she said. "But it's none of my business."

"No," he said, and the 'It's not,' was implied.

She reached out and patted his arm, and he looked down at her hand like it was an alien saucer that had just landed in the middle of a cornfield.

"If you want to talk about it, let me know," she said.

It was the necessary assurance that she gave the friends who didn't want to talk, although she guessed that this wasn't about a bad break-up or grade troubles.

"Lestrade wants you in his office at six o'clock," he said.

He pulled a sticky note out of his pocket and handed it to her. He'd scribbled the address in a diagonal stack of lines. Viola looked down at it and snorted.

"I appreciate it," she said. "But next time, can you knock so that I can avoid self-harm and possible death?"

He didn't return her smile, or even look at her. He drifted to the door, which was still open a crack. He stopped there for a moment.

"Go to John," he said. "He's in the flat."

Genius's orders. He left. This time she actually did go to visit John. Following directions, at last. She knocked on the apartment door.

"Coming," Watson called from the other side, and she could hear him making his way across the floor.

"Oh, good morning," he said when he opened the door.

His face was healing well, but the aging green and yellow of the bruises only made him look worse.

"Hey," she said, and held up the shiny blotch of a burn on the back of her hand. "Ironing accident."

He nodded with polite dismay at her wound, but he'd seen far worse. It was like a pinprick to him.

"Come in," he said.

She followed him into the kitchen, where he turned the faucet on and waved his fingers through the stream for a few moments until it grew cold.

"Put the burn under that. I'll be right back."

She dipped her hand under the water. It was certainly cold enough to relieve the burn for a moment. Watson came back with a roll of bandages and medical tape. He pulled a napkin of one of the hooks beside the sink and handed it to her before he sat down at the end of the table. She took the seat across from him and patted the napkin along the burn, but apparently did not do a thorough enough job, because Watson took it from her and did the same.

"Thanks for this," she said. "I swear I wasn't this accident prone before I came to London. I'm just lucky to have a doctor living upstairs."

"It's not too serious," he said. "You've avoided blistering. What happened?"

She was glad that he was too busy wrapping her hand to look at her face.

"I was ironing and Sherlock walked in," she said.

He looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

"That's it?" he said.

"I was ironing my shirt," she said, and gestured towards herself with her free hand. "The one I have on now. That I didn't have on when he walked in. Because it was on the ironing board."

"Oh," he said. "I see."

He looked back down at her hand and hid his smile in his work.

"Sherlock was acting a little strange today," Viola said.

John finished wrapping her burn and taped it off. He laced his fingers together on the table and pressed his lips into a line.

""You shouldn't get involved."

"Wow, look at you two," she said. "It's like you read the same source material."

"In most situations," John said carefully. "It's best to listen when we say not to get involved."

She leaned back and crossed her arms.

"Yeah, I got that. Although I had thought that you guys would be more open with me considering my connection to the situation. First finding Sherlock and then this job with Lestrade."

He tilted his chin upwards, and then lowered it to his collar.

"Sherlock said you would misunderstand that," John said. "Neither of us would have recommended you for the position had we thought it would require you to work alongside us."

The way he looked at her up past the bridge of his nose made her feel like his daughter.

"No, well, I didn't think I would," Viola said.

"But apparently you did," he said.

Viola paused.

"I'm sorry," was all she could say.

He put a hand briefly on her upper arm in a way intended to be comforting and stood up.

"I would say that I don't mean to be cruel, but I think it's better to be harsh than to put you in any more danger. You really have to stop asking about cases. Any work you do for Lestrade will be limited to office responsibilities, and you shouldn't expect any involvement. Understand?"

"Yes, I really do."

Thanks so much for the comments, you guys! It's very encouraging. I'm currently studying abroad, but am working on the story in my spare time.


	7. Chapter 7

Watson was right. The job was in the dull-as-sin end of the danger spectrum. The first week consisted solely of chores: she picked up coffee, and scheduled the next day's meetings, and picked up more coffee and organized the file cabinet. Lestrade was sparklingly civil. It was always, "Oh, good morning, Viola. How are you? Good?" or, "Evening, Viola, how is your aunt?" or, "Hello, Viola. How have you found your first week at work?"

Lestrade left the office early that afternoon and deserted her at her desk with little else to do other than study. But she wasn't about to do that, so she took out a pencil and pad and doodled at her desk. Viola wondered if Lestrade was acting so formally due to something Watson or Sherlock had said. She could imagine them sitting down at his desk (well, Watson sitting, Sherlock standing with his hands behind his back and his eyes narrowed) and then one of them would say (probably Sherlock), "She has a tendency to nudge her nose into things that do not involve her. Sometimes she saves my smartass turd life, yes, but all the rest of the times she's just kind of lurking in our apartment and picking up information. You know these little American girls..." Viola targeted the white wall across from her as if it were Sherlock and scrunched her nose and mouth together at it. 'Well, let me tell you,' she began in her head, and was involved in her imaginary rebuttal when the door closed.

Viola looked up. The man was beautiful. He was Asian and tall and looked like he'd walked straight out of a smoky fashion advertisement. Everything about him was angled and elegant, from his long, single-lidded black eyes, to his finely cut cheekbones. He wore a deep blue suit, and it was like silk rubbed to shining.

"Is Inspector Detective Lestrade in?" he said.

"No," Viola said. "You didn't have a meeting today, did you?"

He smiled. It would have been perfect for a perfume ad.

"Would you be willing to accompany me?" he said.

This is a terrible development, Viola thought. She spoke slowly, hoped that she could give someone time to interrupt.

"I'm working right now," she said. "And my father expects me to be home in an hour."

"I will hurt you if you don't stand up now," he said. His expression did not change at all.

Viola felt a frightened thrill, and then just shock, like she couldn't quite believe this was happening. She pushed out from behind the desk and the oily wheels of her seat rolled against the tile. Surely Lestrade would walk in at any moment. She bent down and slung her backpack over her shoulder. Her mom was going to be really worried if she got a phone call from the London police.

The man pulled his suit up to show the handgun clipped to his leather belt. Viola caught a glimpse of his pink button-up, the same color that lined the inside of the suit.

"Don't talk to anyone," he said. "Just follow me."

She nodded. And that's just what she did, and then they were in the taxi. She took a look at the driver in the mirror. She expected sunglasses and a strong jaw, but he was a nondescript guy with graying hair and a round chin. The taxi started with a deep growl.

"What's your name?" the handsome kidnapper said.

"Viola," she said, and she was glad he'd asked. She'd read that murderers were less willing to kill victims that they saw as people. Although he didn't look like it would make much a difference. "Yours?"

"You can call me Mr. Shung," he said.

"Then you can call me Miss Viola," she said, and she was going to smile, but her voice trembled and suddenly she couldn't muster one.

Viola watched with growing dismay as more and more of the city passed by the window and the streets transitioned into apartment buildings and residential complexes. They finally stopped in front of a large plaster hotel, and Mr. Shung handed the driver his pay bundled up in a generous tip.

"You should return at the usual time," he said.

Back outside, Mr. Shung guided her down into the guest parking lot with his fingers hooked around her upper arm. He crossed her over to the elevator nook and jis dress shoots clicked grittily against the cement.

Mr. Schung opened a door labeled "Staff" using a small key, and stepped onto a small platform it in yellow. It cut down into a stairwell, and Viola finally noticed the voices echoing up towards them.

"Go," Mr. Schung said.

Thankfully, there was a railing, because the stairway slanted straight down. It grew colder the deeper they went underground, and Viola was grateful for her sweater.

The space below was actually another level of the parking lot, but someone had set up desks and chairs and whole file cabinets to the right. It was like the office of the KGB on one side and an abandoned parking lot on the other. A bunch of men stood around a large wooden table that looked like it should have had a map spread across it marking territories with pins.

At first Viola didn't think she recognized anyone, and then she saw an annoyed looking Sherlock standing with his hands on his hips and his coat swept behind his wrists. Her initial assumption was that he was there by his own free will, but this since there were no guns pressed to his back. This impression was wrong. There wasn't anything sharp pointed under his noise, but there could be a knife in his back at any moment. There were two other men around him, one behind him, and one on the other side of the table with his back towards Viola. They all looked similarly displeased. The handsome kidnapper pushed Viola forward with a hand on her shoulder.

Maybe she'd missed some twinkling of panic, but Sherlock seemed unfazed at seeing her there. It was the rest of the men looked taken aback.

"Who's this, then?" one of them demanded. He was wearing shoes that shone like they were slicked with oil.

Sherlock laughed.

"Couldn't your henchman find the Lestrade? Slippery for a full grown man."

"Shut up," Shiny Shoes tossed behind him. "Mr. Schung, what the hell have you brought there? Who is this?"

Viola snuck a sideways look up at Mr. Schung, and although his face hadn't budged a bit, she spotted the muscle throbbing in his perfectly triangular jaw. He tucked his gun back into his belt.

"Don't you trust me?" he said, in such a way that it was obvious he didn't care. "This is the assistant. She is also Sherlock's neighbor and his landlady's niece. He has an emotional investment in her."

"Hardly," Sherlock's voice came dryly from behind them.

"I've been watching," Mr. Schung said, and although he spoke to Shiny Shoes, his eyes were on Sherlock. "He does."

Sherlock didn't say anything. He just kept that placid expression on his face. Viola wiped her palms on her jeans.

"Bring her over here, then," Shiny Shoes said.

Mr. Schung guided Viola over to Shiny Shoes, and he jerked him towards him by her backpack handle. Then she felt cool metal on the side of her neck, and that stopped all her movements. Her muscles tensed, her breath stopped.

"Now, here's the deal, Sherlock," Shiny Shoes said. "You give us who we want, and we'll give you who you want."

"And how should I do that when your revered leader is in jail?"

"Figure it out," Shiny Shoes yelled, and Viola jumped.

She was so tense that any more loud noises would have her cowering on the ground, and she couldn't exactly let her body do that with a gun at one of its most important parts.

"And what if I don't?" Sherlock said.

He was certainly dragging it out. These were predictable men. Even Viola could tell that. What was he planning?

"Then we'll do to this one what we did to your boyfriend," he said.

Sherlock tsked.

"No, that's the difference between now and before," he said. "Your boss did that. You just carried it out. Now that he's gone, you're just a bunch of thugs. Except for Mr. Schung here. Isn't that right, Mr. Schung? You're the last remaining neuron in a dying brain. And here you are playing lapdog. Yes. I can completely understand why you want your mastermind back."

Shiny Shoes pushed down on Viola's backpack with his hand still on the handle so that she hovered between standing and kneeling with her knees bent, then he shook her forward. She slipped from the backpack straps and fell face down onto the ground. Viola rested her cheek against the cement and focused on the part of her belly where her shirt had pulled up and exposed her skin to the cold ground. She thought she might be about to die.

Shiny Shoes unzipped her backpack and poured its contents down on top of her. A textbook slammed into her head and slipped down to the floor and Shiny Shoes flung the bag down onto her back. But she didn't even care at that point, because her jackknife had slipped into the crook between her elbow and the cement. She moved her arm the inch to cover it.

Shiny Shoes moved forward towards Sherlock. The gun was hanging at his side, the other three men held threats in their faces, but were similarly relaxed. Viola didn't think much about it. She lunged upwards, and at the same time flicked the jack knife open. She had arm wrapped around his neck and the blade pressed to his throat before he could even lift his arm. He was about her height, and smelled like beef and mayonnaise. Viola's voice stuck in her throat, and choked out of ehr mouth.

"Drop the gun," she said.

Her voice shook, but the gun clattered to the ground anyway, and she kicked it over to Sherlock with the dirty white tip of her shoe. It slid to his right instead of directly to him, and he needed to slide over to pick it up. Within moments, he'd shot both henchmen to his left and right and did the same to the one across the table. Their whines echoed off the walls. Shiny Shoes growled something through his teeth, and Viola could see the puffing of his cheeks blurrily in the corner of her eye.

"Don't worry," Sherlock said. "The shots were nonfatal. Unfortunately, murder is illegal."

At which point Shiny Shoes drove his elbow back against Viola's ribs and sent her down the same floor where his men now lay. It'd been a hard jab, and if she hadn't broken a rib, it felt like it. She was just lucky she hadn't fallen on her knife. It had landed next to her, and she grabbed at it, her nails scraping against the bumpy ground. Once she had it one sweaty palm, she lunged across the floor, and plunged it into one of Shiny Shoe's feet.

He let rip a raw, trebling scream.

It finished pretty fast after that, because that was when the SWAT team broke through the door. Viola pushed herself up into a sitting position and made herself small against one of the square columns in the opposite direction of the office area. Somewhere, a man's voice demanded: "Where is Schung?" Viola closed her eyes and drowned out all the shouting, and let herself worry the pain in her ribs.

What seemed like ages later, one of the SWAT members in his shaded helmet and black body armor knelt down in front of her. She looked up, and he slid the visor up so that she could see his eyes. Black cloth covered his mouth and muffled his words: "Miss, are you alright?"

"Yes, it's just my -"

"Come with me, please."

The basement was full of people now. Viola spotted Sherlock talking to Lestrade, but the man had bustled her past them by now. He said something to one of the others on the way past, but she couldn't hear it.

He put a gentle hand on her arm and guided her back up to street level by the emergency stairs, which was a separate door from the lowest level. It had been cold downstairs, but suddenly that seemed stuffy compared to the fresh night air. There were SWAT trucks parked outside and a flashing ambulance, and then of course the crowd that had gathered, looking more curious than concerned. Three attendants in white scrubs hung around the ambulance, and one rushed over with a blanket when he saw her. He asked a host of questions at a snail's pace, like she'd lost the accuracy of her time perception: "Are you all right?" "Where does it hurt?" "Do I have permission to lift your shirt?"

And then he summarized to one of the other attendants: "She's in shock."

"I'm okay," she said, but she felt drunk, and hearing herself talk, it kind of sounded it too.

She would have given a great deal for a hot chocolate and a bath. She closed her eyes for a minute, but that got the attention of one of the bored attendants and he decided to pull at her eyelids and made her look "up to the left, up the right."

When he stopped his prodding, Viola straightened her head and saw Sherlock standing by one of the open doors. There was a splotch of blood on his unbuttoned collar. Other than that, he looked like he had just come from a business meeting.

"Your attack on Twist was unnecsary," Sherlock said. "The police would have intercepted at any moment."

"Twist?" Viola echoed.

Twist, like Oliver Twist. She wondered if that was actually his last name or whether he was a Dickens fan.

"Yes, exactly," Sherlock said.

"Did I say anything?"

"You didn't need to," he said, as if she couldn't have been any slower. "You're right about the source material. That's why their revered leader called himself Dickens."

The third attendant tried to drape a blanket over Sherlock's shoulders, and he batted her away.

"Sir," she said. "If you won't let us examine you, please leave our patients alone."

He gave her a narrow-eyed look.

"Patient," he corrected her. "I'll wait in the car."

He walked away, and Viola followed a few minutes later (after a brief exchange with the nurse:

"Would you like to go to the hospital?"

"No thank you."

"Then I would advise that you go to your general physician tomorrow first thing."

"Thank you for your help.")

The taxi drove off as soon as she closed the door behind her. Sherlock looked out the window for most of the time, and Viola could only think how the exact areas had passed by her window earlier. The windows fogged up on the inside and blurred all the lights of passing cards into furry puffs of green and red.

"Are you all right?" he said finally, without moving his eyes from the passing streetlights. She looked over at him as if surprised to see him still sitting there.

"Yes."

A beat passed.

"Good," he said.

"I've just been wondering," she said.

"Go ahead."

"I've been wondering this whole time, since you started egging on Shiny Sh - Twist, I mean. Did you arrange for me to be in that office instead of Lestrade?"

He glanced at her then angled his head back to the window.

"You would be the last person I would need in a situation like that," he said.

"I'm glad to hear that," Viola said. "And I'm also extremely insulted."

Which meant that everything was back to normal.

((As always, thanks for the reviews! Any feedback is encouraging towards my BBC-inspired mind babies. I actually have written quite a bit more, but it's in the editing process and my exams are fast approaching (and not in English, so DOOooom.) Keep tuned for more.))


	8. Chapter 8 - In Which a Transition Occurs

Sherlock paid at the curb.

"You have blood on your collar," Viola said when she passed him outside.

"You should go to the doctor in the morning."

"You should get a new collar."

Viola went to the door and jabbed the bell. She'd left her keys on the concrete floor of the hotel, with the rest of her stuff. And now her homework was probably zip-locked away in an evidence bag somewhere. If she'd known that would happen, she would have made it more interesting to read.

Sherlock came to stand behind her.

"Don't go to John," he said. "You will need an x-ray."

Aunt Hudson fumbled on the other side of the door.

"But he's free, and I'm so cheap," Viola said.

The door swung open and Aunt Hudson shrieked so suddenly that Viola jumped.

"Oh you poor dears," Aunt Hudson sobbed.

She flung forward and hooked the two into awkwardly uneven group hug. Both decided that it was the best route to remain passive and let it pass, which it did for Sherlock, but Aunt Hudson how shifted her grip on Viola to her shoulder and bustled her through the doorway. The apartment door was already open and it seemed that Aunt Hudson wanted to squeeze through the door alongside Viola. She pushed Viola ahead at the last moment.

"Aunt Hudson, please," Viola said, and dodged around the little woman to get back out the door. "I could some fresh air."

"The kitchen window is open," Aunt Hudson said.

"Probably not as much as I need," Viola said. "I'll just go for a quick walk."

"Walk," Aunt Hudson said. "Certainly not. Every time I let you out of my sight, you're kidnapped or whatever such thing. You are going to bed. You've been through a trauma. John told me all about it."

Viola backed up further down the hall and Aunt Hudson stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to the side in utter astonishment. Sherlock must already have returned to his apartment, because he wasn't in the hall anymore. He could probably hear them. Viola lowered her voice.

"I've only been kidnapped once so far," Viola said.

"Your mother -"

Viola reached behind her and twisted the door open.

"Okay. I won't go for a walk. I'll be outside. I'll sit on the steps like a good girl and you can come rescue me from all my lurking kidnappers."

Aunt Hudson gave her an exasperated expression.

"Fine, dear," she said. "I'll come fetch you for tea when it's boiling."

Viola slipped out the door and seized the cold night air in her lungs. And breathed in an ashy puff of smoke. She tried to cough away the acidity into a fisted hand, but it stuck.

"How's the shock?" Sherlock said.

Viola plopped down onto the top step.

"It's fine," she said. "And yours?"

"I don't get shock."

She smiled thinly.

"Superbrain that you are," she said. "Right, now that we're all been deemed sane and shockless, can you explain what happened?"

He breathed out another puff of smoke.

"How much do you know?"

Viola summarized what John had told her.

"Fine, well, following that, I tracked Dickens down through one of his associates. We found him in his apartment, and brought him in with the help of the London Police. But then they decided that I could correct the problem that same way I'd caused it. Somehow they thought I got get Dickens back for them.

"When it became obvious that I wasn't just going to give them what they wanted through force of torture or manipulation, they decided they needed to threaten someone close to me. Curious that they didn't choose John."

"Lestrade," Viola said.

Sherlock flicked the cigarette down and watched it burn on the pavement.

"They should have checked his schedule more closely. Thankfully, Lestrade keeps a security camera in his office. When he heard both that I was missing and then you had left not two hours later with a 'dashingly handsome young man' as the secretary put it - well, you see what happened."

"What, I can't be friends with hot people?"

"Don't get distracted," Sherlock said. "Lestrade already knew where Dickens kept his hideaway. Happily ever after. Except for that little bit at the end where you almost got us both killed."  
"I thought we were going to die," she said.

He waved that away with a brush of his hand and looked in the opposite direction.

"The police would like to question you about whether I shot those two men are not," Sherlock said. "I told them you were exhausted and would talk to them tomorrow."

"Thanks," she said. "But I just have one more question. About Mr. Schung. What happened to him?"

Sherlock shoved his hands into his pocket.

"Mrs. Hudson will want you in for tea," he said.

The door opened behind her and Viola peered around to see Aunt Hudson's comfortable brown shoes.

"Tea's on, dear."

Viola gave Sherlock a look.

"I see what you did there. I'll ask you about this later."

"Tea, dear," Aunt Hudson pressed.

Viola stood and Aunt Hudson bustled her down the hall and into the apartment, where she forced her down to the couch.

"Needless to say, you will not be going to class tomorrow," Aunt Hudson said from the kitchen. "I made an appointment for you with my own doctor, Dr. Richards, at 11 am. John is a fine physician, but - to be blunt - he's more used to patients under unhappily violent circumstances. The war, you know. So, you'll have time to sleep before we leave."

Aunt Hudson poured her a light green stream of liquid from the porcelain pot into her teacup and placed a biscuit next to it in the remaining space of the saucer. It hung off the side like a flying saucer. Viola checked the wall clock. 7 a.m.

Viola looked out the window. She'd guessed nine. Viola sipped the tea and tolerated Aunt Hudson's staring. She could practically hear her stream of consciousness through the sympathetic gaze: "The little dear, she's gone through so much, and she's so alone here without her mother. She really should just come straight home from school every day, and not risk the city streets."

Viola didn't realize how serious Aunt Hudson had really taken the incident until the next day. Aunt Hudson stopped her outside the office, a small white building with a black painted door and a silver knocker with a plaque just above it that read "Henry Richards, M.D."

"I wanted to talk to you," Aunt Hudson said. "Is that alright?"

Viola turned to her Aunt and tried her best not to look as put-upon as she felt. "Yes," Viola said. "Is something bothering you?"

"You've been spending so much time with Sherlock and John lately," Aunt Hudson said. "Now this incident. Well, I called your mother. I had to, dear. She is your mother. I used the word -and I remember this - I used the word "terrorist" and she just responded in silence and said back at me "terrorist?" She wanted to talk to you, but you'd gone to sleep, and I couldn't wake you. After all you've been through."

Aunt Hudson stopped to take a breath, and her face grew so red that Viola put a hand on her shoulder on an impulse.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm fine."

And Viola didn't know first aid, so this better not lead to a panic attack.

"What I mean to say," Aunt Hudson said. "Is that I know that you've enjoyed your position with Inspector Lestrade, and that it pays very well, but your mother and I agree that you shouldn't continue it. It is too dangerous."

She put emphasis on 'too' with a flustered shake of her head, but Viola wasn't listening anymore. She'd started to grapple for a defense as soon as she realized what the speech was about.

"But this was just a freak incident."

"Oh, really?" Aunt Hudson said, and her voice reminded Viola of her mother's when she caught her lying. "Is that why you keep on finding Sherlock in dangerous situations? It's bad enough that you're living in the same building. I refuse to allow any more professional associations, and your mother agrees. No, your mother insists. And so do I. Now, come inside. We're late for the appointment."

Viola realized that the family had just overruled her. It had come down to the domestic tribunal, and the sentencing had been against her. Now she was jobless. And after only a week.

The doctor visit was short and standard, and after the doctor heard what had happened and checked her ribs, he referred her to a psychologist. Mrs. Hudson gazed at him with her hands clasped in her lap and nodded her head, but Viola had no intention of going to a therapist if she could avoid it. The whole thing was overblown, and she didn't know if she could bear the examination anymore.

But she would have to, because a police officer came to talk to her in the apartment later that evening. They sat down in the living room, him on the edge of the floral couch, her in the easy chair across from him.

"And what happened next?" he said.

"He shot the other one. In the leg, I think, because he was gripping his thigh. But he was the only one I could see clearly from my angle."

The rest of it was the same. Recounting what happened, who did what, who said what, and so on. He left a half hour later with a biscuit from the pile on the plate between them and the doorbell rang soon after.

"We'll be out of food soon," Aunt Hudson called from the kitchen.

"You should stop giving people biscuits," Viola said through a mouthful of biscuit.

Aunt Hudson crossed to the door and checked through the eyehole.

"Oh my goodness," she said.

She unlocked the door, and there stood Viola's mother.

"You're coming home."

Viola's mother stood in the hall with her pantsuit and Bronx accent and serious dark eyes lined with age. There was no arguing. Not with those tight lips and hard stance. "I'm sorry, but I already bought a direct flight."

Viola had five hours to pack, and then they left on the first plane to New York. There was no saying goodbye to Sherlock or John. Aunt Hudson teared up when they hugged at the airport.

Viola didn't talk to her mother for a month. She got over it.

She had to make the credits up over summer, and then senior year happened. If it seems like much to summarize a year in a sentence, it felt the same to graduate and look back. New York passed by her in monochromatic versions of what she'd known before, and she felt like a cat with only a foot of string to play with. All her friends would fall over the map after college, and she would see them once a year at holidays. She turned down invitations and read bad mysteries alone in her room.

"Reverse culture shock," her mother called it, but it was just a lack of interest. She'd uprooted herself and now didn't care enough to plant herself back into the garden. Her mother offered to pay for a physical outlet. She suggested dance and so Viola took up boxing. That helped. Then she moved on to self-defense with one of her boxing instructors, and made friends there with some of the other students. It was better after that, and her grades improved.

Viola did averagely in her classes, and spent the year after interning at a city newspaper and applying to positions in London. Viola's boss referred her to a contact at the Standard, although she would be making barely anything and would need to freelance in some capacity.

She didn't plan on living with relations this time, but Aunt Hudson did know about a cheap flat that she could rent in Hammersmith. It was above a café owned by her old schoolmate, Aunt Hudson said, and "a little rickety, but with all the plumbing in working order."

She got the job just in time to apply for the apartment, and she was standing on her own wooden floor in a London flat by the September of that year. The former tenants had agreed to move out a week earlier, but had left a few remnants behind, including a broken dryer and a bottle of shampoo. Viola bought a sleeping bag and used that for the first week.

A round little man named Eddie Miller owned the drab café downstairs. He closed at five, but the two bars on either side of him raged on: Lawn Mower was the hipster one and the Lion Paw Pub was the classic, but it didn't seem to matter to the patrons. Viola watched the people milling around in front, and they just wandered from one to the other. A beer at one, a glass of wine at another, and it all came together in front of the sad little café. Viola asked Aunt Hudson why she hadn't told her about the nightlife, and Aunt Hudson admitted that she'd never been there after three.

The first day at work was anticlimactic. People gave her small, polite smiles and moved onto their day and their work. The next day was similar. As was the day after that. She was a culture journalist in training. She was assigned to movies and theater, but she could shadow other journalists around in exchange for getting their coffee and doing their research. Which is what she did as soon as she got one of them to talk to her after the "Good morning" part of the conversation. Stephen Tressler, a politics journalist. She got his coffee that morning. A Thursday. The coffee was black with eight sugars. Eight. My god.

She followed him from the office.

"So, where are we going?" Viola asked.

"The lobby of the Redding Hotel," Stephen said. "Press conference."

"With who?"

Stephen gave her a look.

"Seriously? Sherlock Holmes. He and his partner just handed the most recent psycho over the police."

"The partner is-"

"Yeah, I wondered about that too," Stephen said. "But they really are only partner-partners. Just professional. Not that I can understand that. That man is fine as fine can be."

"I mean, the partner is still John Watson?"

"You really need to read more," Stephen said.

Viola had no idea what the case was. She skipped the articles about Sherlock that she passed by in the middle-pages, and she had been working last night on some freelance copy-writing work for a local newspaper, so she hadn't seen the news.

Stephen snapped a newspaper out of one of the red wire containers on the corner and flipped it over to Viola. But then they were in the metro and he was talking to her ("Just don't say anything and write down exactly what he says,") and next thing she knew it, she was sidling up next to some other latecomers at the back of the conference room. Cameras with a million legs filled up the space between the last row and the back, and Viola ended up next to a pretty blonde in a grey pencil skirt. Her press pass stuck out of her blazer pocket, and Viola could only read 'Engels' in passing, but she recognized that it was a Daily Star ID. Viola hadn't realized that professional-wear would be the norm when she woke up that morning. She'd thought about the growing cold and dressed accordingly: a light army jacket over a black blouse and jeans, then leather boots the same dark green as the jacket. The elegantly dressed Engels held a coffee.

"Hey, you got stuck with Stephen Tressler?" she said. "Or was that a choice?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"No, he's fine as long as you're on top of your work. He just likes to assign a lot of it. His own," she said. "He never had an easy time from me about that, though."

"Who are you with now?" Viola said.

Engels snorted and waved a dismissive hand.

"I'm out of that business. I work for Mycroft Holmes."

((As always, thanks for the reviews, the favorites, and the follows! I find your comments especially encouraging. I hope you're all into the major time jump that happened somewhere in the middle here. I have a lot more written, but am editing it currently. Keep tuned for more.))


	9. Chapter 9

So, that Daily Star pass wasn't up-to-date. To enter these press events, you needed either your own pass or someone with one, or you could just be related to the speakers. Apparently not in this case. Viola grinned.

"Sherlock's not letting his own brother in?" she said.

"He's a prick, that Sherlock," Engels said. "Know what he said to me when we first met. He said, 'This is your assistant, Mycroft? I see that you finally found a way around the Oedipus Complex without doing anything illegal.' He just looked me up and down and said that. Didn't even say hello before he rushed out again."

Viola nodded and pretended to sympathize when she was really more interested to know what aspect of his mother Sherlock saw in Engels. Maybe professional sexy bordering on manic?

"Sounds like a real asshole," Viola said. "What's Mycroft like?"

Engels lips spread like hot taffy when she smiled. And then she winked, and she was positively seductive.

"I can't badmouth the man who pays me," she said.

Viola smiled and was about to make a comment, but the crowd quieted into some scattered murmurs and she turned her attention to the podium. An unexpected thrill passed down her back when she saw him. Sherlock stood behind the lacquered podium. He wore a dark grey suit that made him resemble a long, steel rod even more. The lapels caught the white lights of the room and held the sheen that brought to mind clean, angular lines and minimalist apartments. He looked the same, except for a moderate haircut, and fit perfectly into the somberness of the reception room's marble walls and dark wood stadium.

He scanned the audience and his eyes stopped on the area where Viola and Engels stood. Engels wiggled her fingers at him, and then the rows of cameras blinked on one by one, and he shifted his focus back to the general area in front of him. Viola pulled the newspaper from her bag and checked the front page: LEE SCHUNG DEAD: LAST REMNANTS OF DICKENS GROUP WIPED OUT. Sherlock moved the papers on the podium around with the tips of his fingers and read from the top of the page.

"Good morning everyone," Sherlock said.

And here he scanned the notes for a moment and then, with an impulsive flourish, snapped them up and swung them behind him to the nearest person who would step forward to catch them. That happened to be Lestrade, who looked overwhelmed for a moment, and then handed the papers onto a dweeby looking young guy behind him.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Sherlock proceeded. "With the permission and assistance of with Scotland Yard, John Watson and I apprehended Lee Schung days before the Dickens Group could carry out a string of bombings to begin in London. The arrest marks the relative end to the terrorism of this particular group."

Some of the audience members started an enthusiastic clap, and Sherlock waved them into silence.

"I say relative, because there are some remaining lower-order members who still exist and may attempt, some time in the future -"

Lestrade stepped forward and put a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, whispered something into his ear. Lestrade took a step back and Sherlock cleared his throat.

"Well," he said. "That is to say, there are no immediate threats. We will now take questions."

A man hired for the purpose of mediating called on Stephen first.

"Hello, Mr. Holmes. I'm Stephen Tressler from the Standard. Do you believe that the recent swellings in UK-based terrorism is a result of certain political trends?"

Sherlock leaned too close into the microphone.

"No," he said, and his voice echoed large and deep over the PA system.

Engels snickered into her coffee and the mediator selected someone else.

"Jane Hallow from the Times," the man said. "How exactly did Mr. Schung rise from being just another one of Dickens' goonies to the leader of the group itself?"

But Sherlock was clearly over with this round.

"To answer that," he said. "I turn you over to the capable hands of Inspector Lestrade. Thank you."

Lestrade replaced Sherlock at the podium, and Sherlock slipped off somewhere past the crowd on the stage. Viola took that time to pull out one of ten Standard cards she held in her inner pocket. She scribbled her name and number on the back and handed it to Engels.

"Now if you give me your card, I'll finally find out who I'm talking to," Viola said.

"I think a bit of mystery helps," Engels said, but she pulled a stack of card tied with a thin rubber band from her bag and slipped one out for Viola. "But never mind that."

Katherine Engels, it said, and then her work number and email below that in equally sharp print in the center of the creamy white card. Viola allowed herself the warm satisfaction in her stomach for just a moment. Mycroft's snarky assistant. Not a bad contact to have. Engels tucked the cards away back into her back, along with Viola's.

Then she looked up, and she was giving someone over Viola's shoulder her slick siren smile. Viola followed her gaze and there stood Sherlock. He looked even more imposing up close. It must have been how he towered over everyone. The Eiffel tower effect. Or maybe it was the expensive suit. Viola never trusted herself with fabric that joined her at the dinner table. It undoubtedly ended up better fed than she was.

"Well done, Sherlock," Engels said. "Mr. Holmes will be glad to learn that it all went well without any inadvertent insults."

"Inadvertent? Rarely. All my comments in the public sphere fall within the appropriate societal norms. I rarely insult anyone accidently," he said, and suddenly in his last breath: "Why does Mycroft get Mr. Holmes?"

"So funny that you should ask," Engels said. "Ms. Wolfe and I were just discussing this. I was telling her that I always give the preference to my employers. We've become good friends since the press conference began."

Sherlock looked at Viola, and his expression was so passive that he didn't even make a movement of greeting, much less a sign of recognition. He scanned her and his eyes slid from her hair to her shoes. He was collecting data, from the scuffmarks on her heels to the pen tucked into her jacket, and she stopped herself before she could snap at him to cut it out. Not this time, sir. Nope.

"Ms. Wolfe works at the Standard," Engels added.

"That I do, Mr. Holmes," Viola said, and extended her hand for him to shake. He took it, and his long fingers slid coolly against the back of her hand.

She maintained her expression, but it was more difficult to plaster on the polite smile when she had her hand in his and looked up into his face. The pinpricks of blue in the triangle face were so familiar. It was Aunt Hudson's biscuits dipped in black tea and afternoon classes doodling in the middle row. Then, there was just Sherlock. That was enough to melt her composure. She hoped his social perception was as bad she remembered. Sherlock let go of her hand and stepped back.

"You have the opportunity to meet such pleasant people as a journalist," he said, and sent a look towards Engels, who just gave him her smile.

"I'll leave you alone to discuss the conference," Engels said. "Ask him for his first impressions, Ms. Wolfe. You'll be interested to hear what he has to say."

Engels walked away towards the exit and Sherlock turned to her.

"When did you get to London?" he said.

Viola smiled.

"Oh, what? You know me now?"

"If you'd wanted her to know earlier, you would have told her," he said. "It was your choice. A good one. The less she knows, the better."

"You really dislike her," Viola said.

"She reminds me of my-"

"Mother," she said. "I know."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Hm, people do remember my insults after all."

Lestrade had finished speaking and some of the reporters registered that Sherlock stood right behind them. One woman pushed back her seat to try to inch around it and Viola wasn't about to get stuck in a bum rush to speak to the Great Sherlock Holmes. She stood a step towards the door and started to make some excuse about crowds and claustrophobia, but Sherlock seized her upper arm and sped her walk to the exit. He narrowly avoided a microphone pushed into his face on the way out. She allowed it, but once outside, she pulled her arm from his grip.

"You haven't changed," she said. "Still into pulling people around."

"Can I buy you a drink?" he said.

"It's 2 pm."

"Nonalcoholic, of course," he said. "There's a pub right there."

She grinned.

"They serve tea at pubs?"

"And coffee, but that's less advisable. "

They crossed the street and Sherlock held the door open for her, probably to make up for the dragging. Sherlock ordered two green teas at the bar and neither request garnered any change in expression from the bartender, who had both a tea and a coffee maker set up beneath the shelf of hard liquor. It was deserted, but Viola was surprised it was open at all.

"Why did you leave without saying anything?" Sherlock said.

Viola let out an uncomfortable breath-laugh.

"I know you don't really do this, but shouldn't we open up the conversation with some small talk?" she said. "Like: The weather sure is wet lately, Viola. Yes, Mr. Holmes - your name is Mr. Holmes, isn't it? - it has been quite rainy in London since circa forever. I wonder when it will stop, Viola. I suspect never, Mr. Holmes."

"I've been waiting to ask," he said. "I'm curious."

She swiped a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She'd cut it to her shoulders before she moved to London.

"Didn't Mrs. Hudson tell you?" she said. "My mom booked a flight for that night and that was basically it."

"Yes," he said. "But I'd expected a note slipped under our door. That's something I'd thought you would do."

"I'm very theoretically sentimental. But maybe not so much in practice," Viola said. "I didn't think you'd mind so much."

And apparently he heard that as an accusation.

"Well, I suppose if I'd really minded, I would have called or emailed you," he said. "I considered it."

The bartender put the tea in front of them and wandered to the opposite end of the bar. Maybe he interpreted the conversation as more private than it was. Viola picked up the tea and her finger barely fit through the handle. She held it without drinking. It was nice and warm.

"I didn't expect you to do any of that," she said.

Viola examined the red-brown contents of his teacup.

"Did you recover? Mrs. Hudson never let me forget it - that you had to leave because of that," he said.

Viola snorted and he snapped his eyes to her face.

"My mother and Aunt Hudson have been pushing trauma on me ever since," she said. "That was the real damage. The whole thing was frightening, but it was kind of interesting too. I survived, so I guess that's the difference."

"Really?" he said.

"Yes."

"I've been wanting to tell you," he said. "I think I've put enough time between the incident and now."

She had a bad feeling about this.

"What?" she said.

"I lied to you that night in the taxi. About the kidnapping. I planned everything."

((Hey everyone! Thank you again for your continued support! Comments are especially welcome, not only because they're encouraging, but because sometimes they give me ideas about how to continue the story. I have a good idea of where I'm going now with the characters, but it's a living creature, and it's constantly developing. In any case, thank you for your reviews, favorites, and follows. I hope you've continued to enjoy the tale, and keep your eye out for the coming chapters. They're in editing mode. :D))


	10. Chapter 10

It was like when Viola played with watercolors as a little kid and splattered droplets over the paper. The paints ruined the perfect white as soon as they hit it, but there was no restoring it no matter how fast or slow the drops sunk in. This revelation wasn't a part of her memories yet. It was a new addition. An undefined blotch. And it needed refining.

"Explain," she said.

A mark of concentration creased the bridge of his nose right below where his eyebrows met. His voice vibrated softly in the back of his throat.

"You remember what Schung told Twist when he brought you in Lestrade? That I had an emotional investment in you," he said.

"Yeah, and you said 'hardly.'"

"Right. Some of our interactions," Sherlock said, and his voice faltered. "In fact, most of them - were maneuvered with the foreknowledge that Schung was watching. When we ate together. Meeting at the café, dinner with Watson in the flat. When I burst in on you ironing - I apologize for that, by the way."

Her chest clenched. Her mind flipped back through all those incidents days together and sucked the sense of experience from them. Sherlock had tailored her perception of him. She hadn't learned anything real about him through any of those incidents.

The drop sunk in.

"Was John in on it?" she said.

"No, that would never have worked. He's a terrible liar," Sherlock said. He closed his eyes for a moment and, when he opened them, added, "He was angry when I told him."

That information made her feel at least marginally better. Watson had always struck her as genuine. Earnest, even, in a subdued way.

"How long did Schung follow us?" she said.

"Me? Constantly," he said. "Since you found me unconscious on the step, in any case. I know he followed you once or twice. That's common sense. He used very little technology, most of the time. Binoculars and stalking. And then audio bugs, of course. Lucky for you, your room doesn't have a window at an accessible angle to view the interior."

Oh god, she didn't even want to imagine what kind of scenes he would have set up if Schung could see into her bedroom. Viola wiped a hand down over her face. It had sunk in past the layer of hurt, and now she was getting angry. She wanted to insult him a little, but he wasn't so easy to insult, and that exasperated her.

"Sounds like you could have given him some pointers," she said.

"I'm sorry you're reacting so strongly," he said.

"Fuck you."

She could see that both of their minds were racing: hers to calm herself, his calculate what exactly he should say to reduce her emotion.

"He wasn't interested in you without me," Sherlock said.

Sherlock looked like he wanted to say something else, but couldn't quite muster the appropriate response. His mouth opened a centimeter and pressed together again. Viola couldn't bear to sit anymore, so she slipped off the stool and leaned against the bar instead.

"And to think how much he could have learned about Germanic tribal movements through Europe if he'd followed me to class more often," Viola said.

A while ago, she would have soaked her t-shirt with sweat by now, but the cognitive therapy her mother forced her into did work. Much to her surprise. She learned that she could distract herself into calm by focusing on an object in her mind (something monotonous, like a red apple) and then fake the rest. Sherlock noticed the sudden change into placidity, and his eyes scanned her, like his computer of a brain needed to restart to process the update. Viola wondered if he could even guess what she was thinking. She wanted to scrunch that face down into a ball with just those two eyebrows on top. Then she wanted to stomp on it. Detect that, Mr. Holmes.

But then she breathed and let the sweat dry on her palms and she felt calmer because she thought she looked it.

"The convenience of my living situation aside," she said. "Why didn't you use someone else?"

"Because I assumed that Twist was planning on kidnapping me as leverage to get Dickens out of jail, and I needed to make them believe that there was an emotional pull strong enough to get me to do what they wanted," he said. "The only other possibility was Watson. But he was too resourceful to serve the role. Too much experience in tight situations. Schung wouldn't have found him convincing. They needed me at their mercy, especially because their plan was rather desperate and was already unlikely to work. Ultimately, I failed to stop him when it counted. He got away during the fight."

The more he talked, the more Viola remembered.

"And the police tracked me from the office to that hotel?"

"Exactly," Sherlock said.

The bartender came back around to the bar and turned on the little radio with its crooked antennae. He twisted the dial to Tom Waits and static grated along to the cigarette-rough croon.

"What did you use to track our progress from the office to the hotel basement?" Viola said. "Or did you just have someone follow us?"

"No, Schung would have noticed that," Sherlock said. "The day I walked in on you and you burned your hand, I put a tracking device on your back. It was nearly invisible, so you would never have noticed it."

Viola remembered the feeling of Sherlock's fingertips brushing against her back, and a shiver of disgust passed through her. She didn't want to remember that much detail. And the idea of someone having access to her whereabouts for a whole year away from London was worse than the idea of being tracked at all. Not that they would have paid much attention after that one night.

"It's not still on there, is it?" she said.

"It would've fallen off under water," Sherlock said. "As long as you've showered since then."

"And Aunt Hudson didn't know about any of this?"

Sherlock snorted.

"I'm a sociopath, not insane," he said.

"Right," she said, and trailed off into silence.

"Are you expecting some further explanation?" he said.

"What else is there to say?" she said. "Unless you have something to add."

Please God, no. He only looked at her.

"I'll tell Watson that you're back in town," he said.

She stood and readjusted her bag so that the strap cut across her chest. Delicate handbags and purses never suited her. She lost them if they came without any way to hook them around her body. Viola pushed aside the back of her jacket to reach the two pounds she'd tucked into the back pocket of her pants and dropped them onto the bar.

"Ask Watson to call," she said, and let the silence rest for a moment. She couldn't think of anything to say, so she pressed her mouth into a sort-of-smile and left. And when she passed by the window outside, the bartender was pouring him a drink.

Two weeks later...

"Goddamn you to fucking hell in a flaming boat of shit," Viola said.

She bent down beside her bike and pressed at the slashed wheel with two fingers. It was just plushy enough not to carry her the rest of the way home. Out of all the bikes parked at the same rack, why did they choose hers? Wasn't it punishment enough to come in to do busywork on a Saturday afternoon?

Viola shoved her earbuds in and pushed her bike back home. It was dark outside by the time she unlocked the building door and flicked on the hall light. The stairwell was sandwiched between the café and the bar, and everything was deserted on a Monday night.

Viola fastened one hand around the bike's bottom bar and the other around the top. It was bulky, but she only had one flight to go, and she eyed the steps to avoid tripping. It was fine until one of the dark jeans and leather shoes came down at her. Viola sized up the likelihood of the man getting by. It was zero. The stairs were too narrow. It was her or him. She didn't look up, focused on keeping her feet on the stairs and not falling backwards. But the man thought he could make it, and tried several times to approach the half-foot she had made between her and the wall. Viola's temper got the better of her.

"For fuck's sake," she said. "Just back up the stairs. I'd like not to die today, thanks very much."

"Okay, okay," the man said, and jogged back up so that she could pass into the hallway. She let out a huge breath as soon as it was on level ground and looked back to see who had caused her so much trouble.

"Viola?" the man said.

He wore a grey cable-knit sweater with a shirt's black collar pulled over the neckline. His hair was that shade of blonde that suggested a little bit of ginger in his family. John Watson.

"What are you doing in the apartment?" she said stupidly.

"I didn't recognize you on the stairs," he said. "This isn't how I imagined us meeting - especially after Sherlock. Well. Yes. Anyway."

He shook his head and looked off down the stairs with his back too straight and his lips pressed thinly together. Viola felt a pulse of affection somewhere in her gut.

"Not to throw the apologies around, but I probably shouldn't have cursed you out. It's just one of those damn-London-to-hell days," she said. "It's great to see you, actually. Want to come in?"

The lines in his forehead relaxed a little, and a smile slipped onto his face in its familiar position.

"That'd be great, thanks."

Viola flicked the light on in the apartment and rolled her bike in. Watson followed. The apartment was a one-bedroom with nice dark lacquer finish on the floors, small and empty. A slender hallway connected the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. As far as furnishings, there weren't many outside of the necessities like a fridge, a toilet, and a shower: she'd bought a dresser and mattress for the bedroom, a table and a chair in the kitchen, and then two counters for the kitchen. That was it as far as additions went. Viola had bought sheer white curtains for the windows, but had not dedicated herself to decoration. She'd bought the bike instead.

"Wow," Watson said. "Really nice - um - walls."

Viola smiled and leaned the bike against the door.

"I just painted them," she said. "I read that blue is calming, and I need the subconscious advantage. The simplistic furniture choices make the rooms seem bigger, don't you think? See that one seat in the kitchen? That's yours."

"No, thanks, I've been sitting all day," he said.

They both ended up leaning against the counters.

"I'd offer you tea or coffee," she said. "But I don't have any tea or coffee. Or a boiler. Or a coffee maker."

She spread a presenting hand in a circle towards the empty cabinets.

"No, really, this is great," he said. "I'm happy to see you so well set up."

"And I'm happy to see you," she said. "Surprised, but happy."

If they were both so overjoyed to be in each other's company, why did he seem so stilted and uncomfortable? Her questions must have shown in her face.

"I have to admit," he said. "I came about Sherlock. I would have called ahead otherwise. This was more a stab of hope than a visit. Initially."

Viola folded her arms, somewhat because it was comfortable, somewhat because it was cold. The heating was terrible and there were cracks in the window frames. She needed to ask the landlord to come seal them up.

"I'm curious," she said.

"It's hard to tell whether I'm worrying needlessly, but I haven't seen or heard back from Sherlock since this morning," he said. "He said he was coming to the café, so I thought he might've stopped by to talk."

"He comes to this café?" she said, and jabbed a finger down to the floor. "The one beneath this apartment?"

"Mrs. Hudson has a discount card, so he gets the drinks practically free there," he said. "He comes and works when he's in a bad spot. Says that the mindless chatter helps him focus. I had hoped I would find him here and now that I know he's not, I'm even more concerned."

"Why?" she said. "What's there to be worried about? Arch-enemies at his tail?"

"No, he's chasing his own tail this time," John said. "His behavior for the last two weeks has been more manic than usual. It's been bad for months, but it's gotten worse. He sleeps a couple of hours every other night, not eating as far as I can see. Actually, he's been extremely productive with cases."

Yeah, without all those distractions. Eating and sleeping. Bleh. Hate those.

"Does this have anything to do with the talk we had after his press conference?" Viola said. "I didn't think he felt it that much. I mean, just because of the timing and everything. Two weeks."

John pursed his lips and dipped his chin.

"In part, yes. Not that he would even recognize that," he said. "You wouldn't believe how much he'd deny it if you asked."

"And you have?" Viola said.

"He solved four cases the night I brought it up. But that's not the reason. It's hard to say with Sherlock, but his mother died a few months after you left."

She remembered what Engels had told her about Sherlock's character analysis: I see that you finally found a way around the Oedipus Complex without doing anything illegal. The effect of that seemed crueler in this new light.

"I'm sorry," Viola said, and she was. "How'd it happen?"

"Heart-attack," he said. "He's barreled on without much change. He hasn't taken any time to mourn, and - well - things like this happen."

Viola tried to think of what to say and wished badly that she had some tea to prepare or some crackers to stuff into her mouth.

"I'm not angry about the kidnapping," she said. "You can slip that little bit of information in over dinner."

John folded his arms and Viola noticed a small hole in the wrist of his sweater.

"I'm not sure that would help," he said. "I think what really tortures him is that he failed. He wanted a victim who would stay meek and quiet and afraid so that he could keep his eye on Schung until the SWAT team could arrive. You weren't that. The way he sees it, his inability to predict the outcome caused Schung to slip away. This conclusion to the Dickens case wasn't a success to him. It was a reminder of a failure."

"He feels like he just mopped up his own mess," Kris said.

"I think so," John said. "Listen, I should go back and see if Sherlock has come back to the flat. Do you want to come for dinner?"

She said she did, and they left.

John and Sherlock's apartment hadn't changed much since Viola had seen it last. Sherlock wasn't there, and John cut a few slices from a loaf of sourdough on the counter and pulled out some bagged ingredient to make them cheese and lettuce sandwiches.

"Coffee?" John said. "We have a coffee maker now."

"Sure."

John brought her a cup of black coffee in a grey mug and placed the cream and sugar in the middle of the table to let her serve itself. She dumped a spoonful of sugar into cup and mixed it in.

"I saw the article you worked on about that employment agency and their partnership with the London homeless shelter system," he said. "Very insightful. You'll be debunking government corruption soon enough."

"I have my eye on tearing down the peerage next," she said. "I've been practicing my London accent for the purpose."

"Let's hear it," John said.

Viola gathered her best general-London accent into her vowels.

"Good day, Mr. Prime Minister," she said. "I'm not American in any way, by birth or relation. As you see by the authenticity of my accent, I probably am not an undercover reporter. Can I bring you some fish and chips and profoundly influence your decisions on a daily basis? Long live the Queen, by the way."

John chortled.

"I'm not sure that will convince him," a voice said from behind her.

Viola twisted around in her seat and tried to control her shock. It wasn't his silent appearance that took her by surprise. Sherlock looked terrible. There were dark shadows around his eyes and he was gaunter, if that was possible. And his voice sounded so tired, like gravity was dragging it down to the ground.

"Where've you been?" John said.

"Working, solving cases," Sherlock said and crossed over to his door. "What I do."

He opened the door and after a minute, Viola followed. She knocked even though it was open, to be polite, and he looked darkly back at her. He stood just beyond the light from the open door, and she moved aside to let in more. The place was a mess. Books covered the area around the rug, some opened purposefully to specific pages. Viola reached over and tried to flip on the wall light several times.

"Your room is like a Victorian throwback," she said. "How do you read with no lights?"

She scanned the room for anything else to illuminate the depressing space. No wonder he didn't sleep in here.

"Don't need much," he mumbled. "Excellent eyesight."

Sherlock turned towards the desk and fumbled through the papers in the dark. As if he could see. She noticed the light from the apartment reflected on a round, metal object on the desk, and she strode towards it. She didn't even bother going to the right side, just reached past over Sherlock's arms and fumbled to find the switch on the desk lamp. It was at the base and flickered into a weak yellow light.

"Do you mind?" he said and waved a packet of papers at the door.

"Sherlock," she turned on him, and held her thumb and forefinger together in front of his face with a centimeter of air between them. "I am this close to throwing you onto that bed."

((Okay, things are going to complicate themselves from here on. I know this because I've already written the next few chapters. Things be happening, people. And once again, thank you so much for your follows, favorites, and comments. I notice that some of you have hung in there and left reviews on several different chapters as I've uploaded them, and I just wanted to say thank you for that! Also, if any of you have comments as nice as Silent Reader's, please don't hold them in. I'm all for lovely anonymous reviews like that one. FYI, I will edit and upload a chapter again by next week. Thanks again, folks!))


	11. Chapter 11

He blinked.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"I am going to bring you something to eat," she said. "And then you are going to bed. To sleep."

"You're not in the position," he began, and she interrupted him with a guttural sigh.

"I know," she said. "I get that you're an exception. When you don't eat or sleep you can solve a dozen cases in one night. But when humans don't eat or sleep, they get tired. Their emotions run out. You can't just keep going."

He didn't say anything and Viola got down on her knees under the desk and unplugged his table lamp. The room blinked off into black except for the light from the door.

"Am I supposed to undress in the dark?" he said.

She marched to the door with the light in one hand and its wire wrapped in a loop around the other and stood silhouetted in the light.

"It's a good thing you have such good eyesight," she said, and closed the door behind her.

By the time she and John had found all the ingredients and made a sandwich in a messy collaboration, Sherlock was already asleep. Viola opened the door and the light fell down on a long, pale foot stuck out from the end of his blanket. So she left the sandwich on his desk and snuck out again.

"Do you want a drink?" John said from the kitchen.

"Maybe a couple."

Viola woke up on a leather couch. She opened her eyes to the mind-splitting light of day. It was overcast in the white-bright way that made people take out their sunglasses even though the sun was lost above the clouds. Viola rolled away from the light and stopped mid-movement when the nausea hit her.

"God, why sun?" she mumbled.

"It's 11 am," John said from the kitchen.

11 am. Oh shit, work. Viola sat up in a hurry and her stomach lurched towards a potential vomit. Mind over matter, she told herself, and forced her eyes into a quick scan of the room. She slid over and pulled on the socks with the heels bunched around the side of her foot and shoved her feet into her leather shoes. Standing up required more self mantras of "Mind of matter," and "Fake some dignity." She snatched her bag up from the table and headed to the door.

"I made breakfast," John said.

"Late," she called from the hall.

She barreled down the stairs and John's voice echoed down after her.

"They make you work Sundays too?

Viola slowed her clomp downstairs and came to a full stop on the last step. Sunday? Right, because yesterday was Saturday. She hit her thigh with her fist. She was losing it. Not that she'd ever had an efficient calendar arranged in her mind, but she could have at least remembered it was the weekend. It was a Sunday and was silent accordingly. No car horns, no voices, no Aunt Hudson vacuuming the flat. There were only John's footsteps creaking old wood and the buzzing silence behind it, like an electric telephone wire. Viola made the heavy ascent back upstairs and closed the door behind her. Now that her body knew it didn't have to behave, the nausea felt worse.

John fed her wordlessly: tasteless and consequently healthy cereal flakes, hot and bitter black coffee. She kept her back straight and her elbows off the table. She wanted those shots to seem like they'd dripped away over night. The first beer had been a formality, and the memory of it made the nausea flare up.

"Where's Sherlock?" she said.

"Still sleeping."

Viola couldn't help but feel a little pride at that.

"Are you sure it's him?" she said, and it was such a possibility that John didn't even smile.

"Short of a blood test, yes."

Viola finished her coffee and placed the cup back in the saucer with a decisive click.

"I'd better go before he wakes up," she said, and pushed the seat back.

"Er, what? You don't need to."

Viola adjusted the bag over her shoulder and shrugged.

"I have things to do anyway," she said. "Thanks for the drink and the hangover. See you later."

It was a gloomy day and then her cell phone rang and Stephen Tressler made it worse.

"Listen up, Viola," he said.

She had just thrown her keys on the kitchen table and stopped with a hand on the back of the chair.

"All clear," she said. "Go ahead."

"There was a break out at Belmarsh last night. The Dickens Group paid off the inmates to stage a riot. It's under control, but they can't find the hierarchy anywhere - Twist, or Schung - except for Dickens. The man itself is still in there. Innocent as a schoolgirl. This a corruption gold mine. Guards, warden - it goes deep. I want you in here in an hour to help take calls and handle the office. Got it?"

"Yeah, sure, it's got. I'll be right in."

He hung up and Viola heaved a sigh. Oh, hey, Vi, biggest news of the month. How would you like to come in and do paperwork? Sounds great. Thanks for the opportunity.

She would need to change into something less wrinkled and walk-of-shamey. Viola smoothed a hand through her hair and threw her bag down onto the counter. A dozen different chores passed through her mind: clothes, coffee, bike tire. She could use the caffeine. Did the cafe downstairs open late Sundays? She felt for her wallet in her bag and transferred several pounds into her back pocket. The floor creaked. God, this place was so old that it made noises when she wasn't even moving.

The floor creaked again, but this time it was obviously from behind her. It was too late for a fast spin. Whoever was there was already there. She made the slow twist towards the doorway, and her heart jumped when the shape in the doorway appeared in her peripheral vision. Schung leaned against one side of the frame with both hands in his trench coat pockets.

((Repeated thanks for comments, favorites, and follows. It was a long chapter last week, so this week's is a bit short. Next installment will be next Saturday!))


	12. Chapter 12

(( Hey Sherlock lovers! I realize that I updated the story a little late, but I couldn't get onto at all yesterday. Connection weirdness. :/ This chapter is full of plot unveiling (and resulting plot holes, although hopefully not too many obvious, gaping ones.) I've already written the following chapters and they are in the editing phase, so the next update should come on Saturday as usual. More scenes with Sherlock are coming up, I promise!

**BEFORE YOU READ**: I've compiled a playlist for this fanfiction that I suggest you listen to as you read this chapter (and maybe previous chapters, if you're new to the story.) I've chosen the songs for mood rather than as a representation of the characters.

Until I can figure out how to insert it into the actual story without it mutilating the url, **you can find the** **link on my main profile.**

I'd love to read your feedback about whether you think that the songs are appropriate choices for the fanfic, and what songs you'd suggest (whether for the story or for each character. I'm curious!) I tried to keep to the more mellow songs, because I feel like the BBC soundtrack is on the brooding side. Also, as usual, thank you for the comments, favorites, and follows, and please review! I love to hear your comments and feedback - they help me keep writing, give me ideas, and they mean a lot to me personally. Enjoy!))

* * *

Her mouth popped open and nothing made it there from her brain (_what are you doing here? are we going someplace? please don't kill me (?)_). Schung waited for her to process him and only then spoke - a little early, if she could be honest. Another half-hour would have been useful or maybe just a complete time freeze so that she could leave the apartment completely.

"I need your help," he said. "May I sit?"

She smiled tightly and her eyes slid down to his pocket, where he clearly held a gun. That, or an object of a similar weight and purpose.

"Please," she said, and opened her hand towards the one seat. She dropped her keys back onto the counter with a resigned clanking of metal on plastic and Schung took a seat. He seemed completely comfortable at first. He rested one arm on the table and spread his legs so that the coat cut open around his bent leg and showed jeans shredded at the knees. The holes gapped too large and ragged to be fashionable. He planted his toe a little beneath the chair and the sole cracked off. Apparently he stole his coat off a model and his jeans and boots off a hobo. And now that she really looked at him in the grayish light from the window, he seemed a little worn, a little tired. The gleam on his forehead was just heavy enough to skip past a "glow" and towards sweat. It would be great if he were sick enough to faint or otherwise weaken enough for her to get past him and his gun, but his gaze was too present to be near to unconsciousness. His eyes trained on her face and stayed there. The former patriarch of the Dickens Group sat in her kitchen with a gun directed in her general direction. She had to be admit, she was curious. How could she help him?

Viola had caught up on the news. To the point that the recycling bin in the hall now looked like a newspaper rack in a library. Schung had been busy since she moved back to New York. With Dickens in jail, he had taken over the leadership post and the Group had paid off half the Cabinet and planted a few of their members into primary government positions. They'd killed a whole host of people along the way too, from representatives to computer programmers. It could take a couple of years for the government to self-examine and root out the Group's influence. Viola bet that some of the members would continue in their positions for years after and never be convicted.

"I overheard your phone call," Schung said.

"Oh, yeah?" she said.

"I need your help getting in contact with Sherlock Holmes," he said.

Viola pointed a finger at her chest.

"You want my help? My voluntary help?" she said.

He reached up and wiped the sweat from his cheek with the side of his hand. He pulled the hand from his coat and Viola seized up. But his had emerged empty. He'd left a weight behind it that pulled the fabric down his leg so that it hung from his thigh.

"After you hear what I have to say, it will be voluntary," he said.

"I'm listening," she said, and she leaned against the counter edge with her hands propped on the top. It comforted her to feel the solidness behind her.

"I never took over after Twist's internment," he said. "I had a disagreement with Dickens soon after that night at the hotel. It was over money. He wanted to share the responsibility - and the risk - but not the profits. So I went back to Tokyo and hoped that he would make another offer once I deprived him of my assistance."

"Did he?" Viola said.

"No," he said. "And I entered into a business management that was more consistently profitable than any of my ventures with Dickens."

By the way he'd said that so carefully, she guessed that it was related to prostitution. Anything that sold that fast usually had to do with sex or something addictive, like drugs or cake.

"Which was?"

"Host clubs," he said.

She crossed her arms.

"Does that involve strippers?" she said. "Or am I being presumptive?"

"Wealthy men and women go to these clubs for male company," he said. "With some additional services provided. I own several."

She hadn't been so presumptive.

"If it was so profitable, why'd you come back?"

"My cousin died," he said, and there was nothing in his tone that showed any lasting regret over it. "My parents practically raised him, but my mother isn't physically stable enough to travel, so I came. I didn't expect the kind of welcome that Dickens provided."

"He'd used you as a scapegoat," she said.

Viola suddenly saw her name on the front page of the Standard subtitling a headline in epic bolded letters: Schung Breaks Out, Runs Like The Dickens.

Schung nodded.

"Dickens employs people in every sector," he said. "Credit cards with my name were swiped in hotels I've never visited and that I ate at restaurants I'd never heard of. There was a paper trail, fingerprints, witnesses, body doubles - I was supposed to have murdered some official's mistress who happened to work in the government in late October. They told me that later, when they arrested me. The same day I got to London.

"Dickens met me at the airport when I came back, showed me to my old flat. Said he'd rented it for me again and that I'd owe him. I thought I'd have a few hours to take my things and leave, but Sherlock was there as soon as Dickens walked out. With the whole police force."

And then it dawned on her. So obvious and stupid, she almost forgot he had a gun.

"Jesus Christ," she said. "How could Dickens have done all this from jail?"

Mr. Schung rubbed a hand along his jeaned thigh and gave her a dark smile.

"That isn't Dickens," he said.

Viola stuck her neck out and raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

"You're shitting me," she said. "Where is he?"

"Somewhere safe and hidden," he said. "The man in his place is his brother. That's the person the police actually caught after the first event at the museum."

Viola huffed out a breath of utter bewilderment.

"Why would his brother agree to do that?" she said.

"There was no agreement to it. The brother's a idiot. He slipped up one too many times and Dickens chose not remove him through more permanent means. An act of kindness," Mr. Schung said. "And there's the added advantage that they look similar and are about the same age - not that there are many recent pictures of either of them. Dickens has been underground for years. All the paperwork was as easy as calling a few numbers."

Viola's mind raced.

"So you mean to say, through that whole kidnapping thing - that was all to get Dickens's brother out of jail?"

"That was a Group problem," he said. "Dickens' arrest put a crack in his power, and then it practically fell apart after Scotland Yard arrested Twist. His hold was getting weaker. Dickens works through wonder and awe, and a caged magician who can't get out of the cage isn't as awe-inspiring. It becomes more difficult to get things done when all those little, faceless dots over the map stop performing at your whim. After their plan failed, my 'rise to power' satiated many of the members desire for a strong leader and redirected the police's efforts towards a different target. With me arrested, he could stage his own escape and take over again."

"Wow, complex thinker. I bet he'll be pretty pissed off to learn that you've escaped too," Viola said. "How'd you get out if it wasn't planned?"

"A lucky flu," Mr. Schung said. "I was in the infirmary when panic broke out, and I managed to slip away from the nurses."

Okay, so all that sweating was actually a serious and contagious disease. Somehow that made him less welcome. But she believed him. If it was a lie, it was a long and uncessary one.

"What did you do after you snuck out the infirmary?" Viola said.

"I knocked out a guard and took his uniform," Mr. Schung said, and a wiry smile suggested that he didn't just knock him out. " I broke into a car in the prison parking lot and drove to my old apartment. The only clothing left over was this coat beneath my bed. Then I grabbed some pants and boots I found in a corner donation bin."

From that, Viola got that he was not wearing a shirt. She decided not to dwell on it (or the fact that she had skipped past the point of the whole speech.) Focus.

"How did you know where I live?" she said.

"I tapped your Aunt's calls back when I took you from the Inspector's office," he said, and didn't seem at all reluctant to admit it. "She'd mentioned this property - well - an inordinate number of times. She'd wanted your mother to move to London and rent it. It seemed likely you would return, with your connection to Mr. Holmes."

He treated that last reference with carefully, and she gave him an annoyed look that hoped would inspire some doubt on that topic.

"Okay, so now that I've got your story," she said. "What do you want?"

"Sherlock's help," he said. "I want to trade amnesty for finding Dickens. I can give him information that will lead Sherlock directly to him?"

She paused.

"Complete amnesty?" she said.

Seemed unlikely. He nodded once.

"I need to get back to Japan," he said. "But I can't book a plane, much less be seen in an airport."

"Okay, all clear to there. But exactly how could you help Sherlock find Dickens?" she said. "In case he asks."

"I can provide places, names, past acts, associated corporations - things that no one else knows in full save myself."

Viola was impressed.

"You must have hid very well," she said. "How have you survived in the same jail as him and his connections for so many weeks?"

Mr. Schung gave her a joyless smile.

"With great difficulty."

This was a great story. And she had it. Not that snot, Tressler. More importantly, if Sherlock and John had the advantage of this information (taking for granted that they won't attack Schung on sight), this could bring the end to something that had continued for far too long. If what Schung said was true, Dickens was as much at large as he had ever been. And while she understood that Mr. Schung was still a former terrorist and current male-flesh trader, she quite liked him. The fact that he was breathtakingly good-looking might possibly have been influencing her perception.

"I'll call," she said.

"Thank you," he said.

"But first," she said, and leaned forward with her finger held in the air to punctuate each word. "Are. You. Wearing. A. Shirt?"

She went to her bedroom and grabbed one of the larger unisex t-shirts from the bottom drawer of the dresser. He was a lean guy, so it should fit and then some. Back in the kitchen, Schung held it out in front of him and stared at the front. It was a New York Jets t-shirt with the green, oval logo in its center. She turned her back to him so that he could have some privacy.

"Um," she said "It's football. American football."

"You can turn back around," he said. "You're not the most unpleasant person I've been naked around recently."

"I'll pass," she said.

"Whatever you like," he said, but by this time, he'd changed.

Viola turned around slowly, just in case he might still have been slightly naked, and he was fully clothed and sitting down.

"Okay," she said "I'm going to call John and Sherlock and ask them to come over to speak to you. When they arrive, you could make yourself invisible for a bit. To make things easier."

Mr. Schung nodded towards the only other door she could possibly mean.

"In there?" he said. "Is that your bedroom?"

"There's that and the bathroom," Viola said. "And I want your gun."

He leaned forward and folded his hands between his knees. A few seconds passed and then he sat up and placed the gun on the table. Viola considered hiding it and instead put it under one of the counters in his full view and closed the door.

"There's another thing," she said, and angled back to him. "Before I call them, it would make me more comfortable if you were locked in."

He raised his beautiful eyebrows. They were like dashes of black paint: dark in the front and fading towards the curve of his brow bone.

"You want to lock me in your bedroom?" he said.

Was he teasing her? She couldn't tell.

"You're asking for a lot of my trust already," she said. "Think of our history. What with the kidnapping and all."

"I understand that," he said, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "Okay. Yes. I will do that. The bedroom, then?"

The bedroom it was. He looked unimpressed as he stood in the doorway.

"You can sit on the mattress if you like," Viola said. "Or the floor."

"There are so many options," he said without inflection.

He stepped inside and Viola went to get the door key. She kept all the keys in the kitchen closet on a hook nailed into the wood. On the way, she filled a glass cup with water from the faucet and grabbed an apple from the fridge. She didn't actually believe the saying 'feed a cold, starve a fever.' He'd need real food soon. She brought them into the room and handed both to Schung, who looked faintly surprised to be holding them.

"I'll call them now," Viola said and backed out of the room. "Everything good in here? Yes? Great. See you soon."

She closed the door and locked it. Hopefully he didn't intend to break out or materialize into the hallway. Or kill her if Sherlock didn't show up. Viola pulled out her cell and decided to call the house phone to be fair to her fate. Maybe Watson would answer. The phone rang once and Sherlock picked up.

"Holmes," he said.

"Hi, it's Viola," she said.

"We have caller ID," he said. "What is it?"

"Lee Schung is in my apartment."

There was silence on the other end.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said. "Listen, it'll be impossible to tell you everything over the phone, but can you and Watson get over here right now? I mean ASAP. There's no one pointing a gun at my head. It isn't a trap - I think - but just don't tell anyone he's here."

"Okay," he said.

She paused in surprise.

"Really?" she said.

That'd been easy.

"We'll be there in forty minutes. And Viola?"

"Yeah?"

"Next time you enter our apartment," he said "Please refrain from putting me to bed."


	13. Chapter 13

The phone clicked and Viola pulled it away from her ear, checked the screen. Sherlock's phone manner was possibly worse than in person. The least he could do was say goodbye, considering that she was harboring a fugitive for him. 'Speaking of fugitives,' Viola thought, and rapped a knuckle against the bedroom door.

"Everything good in there?" she said.

Schung's voice came through muffled: "What would you do for me if it weren't?"

Viola pulled back and stared at the wood like it had reached out and smacked her on the forehead. For a guy who thought she was dating / screwing another man, he had no problem throwing flirtatious lines at her. She suspected that it was his way of getting back at Sherlock. He hoped she would carry the news of his flirting over to Sherlock and get a few jabs in. Looks like he held grudges. Viola let the comment lie and went to look for something to read to waste the time until Sherlock and John arrived. Failing that, she pulled yesterday's paper out of the recycle bin and stuck to the arts and times section. She was deep in on the movie review column when the bell rang to announce that they'd arrived at the front door, and she ran to buzz them in so fast that she slammed into the side of the door on the way out of the kitchen. It only showed that her mind added more space to the flat than there actually was.

Sherlock appeared at the top of the stairs first. He wore a grey tweed coat and a dark blue scarf twisted around his neck like a cravat. In the shadow of the hall, it was the exact color of his eyes. He stopped in front of Viola's door and looked past her into the apartment.

"Where is he?"

John came up behind Sherlock and greeted her behind his arm with a nod and a smile. She waved the two men into the apartment, extended a hand to guide John in.

"I'll explain everything in the kitchen," she said, and locked the door behind them.

None of them wanted to take the one chair, so all three stood. Neither man spoke as Viola unraveled the story. It was like standing in the center of the room while a row of cameras zoomed in. The speech started a little ratty-edged and awkward, but then Viola caught onto the narrative flow and managed to deliver both Schung's story and her own without circling back to readdress old details. When she finished, Sherlock unfolded his arms.

"Take me to Schung," he said.

Viola unlocked the bedroom for them. Schung was lounging on the mattress, sockless feet crossed, head against the pillow and hair a little mussed. He looked up with the half-eaten apple in his hand.

"Hello Mr. Holmes," Schung said. "Mr. Watson."

Sherlock gave Viola slow look over his shoulder.

"You brought him a snack?" he said.

"Not everyone can live on air alone," she said.

He raised his eyebrows at Watson: "Could we...?"

"Yes, of course," John said. "Vi, would you mind if we took the room for a moment?"

They stepped into opposite directions, her towards the kitchen and them into the bedroom. Sherlock shut the door behind them and Viola told herself that it would be silly to feel left out. But she did, anyway, because she couldn't possibly contribute anything to their mighty duo. She leaned against the frame and tried to listen, but only heard voices and the odd word here and there ("...where ... choose..."). Ten minutes later, then the door opened and Sherlock stood on the other side.

"I believe him," he said.

She came forward.

"What did you do in there?" she said, and looked around him.

Schung was pulling the shirt back down over his head. His body was all long, lean muscle, and there was a tickle in her chest when she saw the soft dark trail that led from his navel somewhere down below the belt line of his pants. He'd been adjusting the shirt over his waistline and now he glanced up at her and her heart doubled its speed. She immediately switched her attention to Sherlock, who had definitely noticed and narrowed his eyes for a split second like he'd just learned something unpleasant. He came out into the hall while John and Schung continued talking inside. Viola wasn't paying much attention to them, but she could hear that they were referring to Schung's fever. Sherlock let his hands hang at his sides, and just standing there in his utter thinness, he still took up most of the hall.

"I suspected that Schung would try to deny future involvement with the Dickens Group," Sherlock said. "I wanted to see that he had destroyed any chances of further association with them. Dickens makes all his members tattoo a quote somewhere on their bodies. I've never heard of a member leaving the Group, but in the few cases I've seen in Group-related deaths, the tattoo had been burned away. Probably to signify shame and desertion. Schung is a prideful man and I'd assumed that he would do the same to honor a symbolic death, and he did. He had it covered up with a traditional Japanese tattoo - dragons, fire, blue and yellow and red. You can still see some of the original ink under the lighter colors, but no one would notice it without the intention of finding it. I would've invited you in, but you struck me as a bit of a prude."

Viola ignored the tone of his last sentence.

"What was his quote?" she asked.

"All the tattoos are the first lines from novels. His is 'it was the worst of times.' You're familiar with it?"

It was so familiar, in fact, that she almost rolled her eyes at the fate of it appearing in this moment. She'd read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens in her 10th grade English class and her friends adopted the classic line as a commentary on life and school every time something went wrong ("I failed the final, but passed the class. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." / "BTWT.")

"He only went for the second part?" she said.

"Someone more important got the better time," Mr. Schung said.

He joined them in the hall, and suddenly the space grew cramped. Viola wiped her hands on her jeans and breathed in steady streams of air, but it was harder to control her physical responses to social nervousness than to anger. Thunder grumbled somewhere outside, and pattering on the glass made the storm official. Now she remembered reading something about bad weather hitting London that weekend. Worse than usual, anyway. Thunder and lightening and healthy fields. What a great mood piece.

_It was pouring, and the handsome Japanese men had a tattoo somewhere beneath the privacy of his clothes that covered the faded lines of another tattoo... one much more sinister._

This article was going to certainly differentiate her career from its unfortunate run-in with Tressler's. It would make her year if she could somehow wiggle out from being his unofficial secretary / slave. And by this point, Tressler probably realized that she wouldn't be coming in to help out. That distressed her for a few seconds, and then she decided that she would tell him that she'd crashed her bike. Besides, anyone could answer phones.

She was replaceable at work, but she needed to make herself invaluable to Sherlock and John. They had no need to include her and her involvement in the case could be over in an hour if she didn't say something. To put a negative spin on it, she was a civilian without any official training and therefore a liability and a distraction. She would need to carve out her own position. Make herself seem useful and necessary, even. Those boxing lessons didn't make her la femme Nikita, but she intended to mention them. As often as possible. No more waiting behind closed doors.

She spoke up with the new enthusiasm of someone who had just convinced herself into action.

"Mr. Schung, do you think Twist and the brother might have gone to find Dickens after the break-out? Maybe they have a base?"

Schung folded his hands in front of him in a way that was too dignified to fit the rips in his pants and the scuffs on his shoes. He belonged in brand name suits.

"Wherever Dickens is now, they will try to go," he said. "But they change headquarters every few months. Especially if it's been a difficult year. It could be anything from a member's basement to a hotel room. It's the same for meetings. They choose hotels or buildings with large spaces that they can reserve under the guise of organizations or corporate meetings."

"If there are so many members, you might want to send a decoy," Viola stated. "Someone unknown."

Sherlock spoke before she'd even finished: "We'll call Inspector Detective Lestrade before we decide anything else. We need his participation."

"For once, you're actively seeking out a way to work inside the law," John said.

"It's imperative that we have. We need a large organization to fill the holes we can't spot ourselves, and we need a man to keep that large organization on a leash. He's the best option we have."

"You mean he's the only one who will agree to your demands," John said.

Sherlock grinned and pulled out his phone. Viola's empty squatter-rate apartment was becoming an extension of Scotland Yard.

Lestrade stood drip-drying on Viola's kitchen floor an hour later.

"You want to do what?" Lestrade said. "What makes you think they won't recognize you?"

She'd suggested that she'd be a good choice to feel out the next Dickens Group meeting, and his voice did not so far suggest that this would be likely. Sherlock and John looked equally doubtful and Schung didn't seem to care either way. He leaned against the wall with his elegant hands tucked under his arms.

"If Twist even remembers me, it's unlikely that I'd get close enough for him to look my way," Viola said. "What does it matter as long as I'm in a crowd of his other devotees? I'm as good as anonymous."

Sherlock rolled his head backwards.

"It's obvious what you want."

"Care to clarify for the rest of us?" Lestrade said, and sounded as if he really needed someone to tell him why some girl wanted to be thrown into the middle of a bunch of cult terrorists. Viola wondered herself, sometimes.

"She's a reporter," Sherlock said. "And a fledgling one at that. They're the worst kind."

That clarified it to a certain degree.

"What?" Lestrade said, and looked around accusingly at John and Sherlock. "Why didn't anyone tell me this?"

And suddenly she felt like she had broken Schung out herself. Her sense of pride flared up.

"I'm a reporter," she said. "But it's not as if I saw a paper-selling topic a mile away and ran right over to insert myself into the situation. I have a history with it, remember? Just think about whether I can provide this service and whether you want me to. I'm already more knowledgeable about the situation than any foot soldier you pull in, and more trustworthy. I'll write the article, if I can. But only with your permission. The case comes first."

The case did come first, but Viola had slipped into a half lie. Once (and if) they found the real Dickens and released the story to the public, all the reporter's of the city would be on this, and she would need to be prepared. She could not say with complete honesty that Lestrade's permission or lack thereof would change her article.

Lestrade looked taken aback.

"It's going to take a bit of thought," he said. "What about the voice?"

He wiggled a finger around his mouth, like her accent was a smudge of food at the corner of her mouth.

"Yes," Sherlock said. "I wonder what percentage of Americans are part of an English terrorist group."

"I can handle a London accent," she said. "And I'll keep the talking at a minimum."

Sherlock looked like he wanted to refute her claim, but he held back.

"If we did use Viola in this capacity, how would we find this next meeting place?" Lestrade said to Mr. Schung.

"It would be better if we had a former member to assist us, but those do not exist. You are stuck with a difficult process. An established member must extend an invitation and guide the new member through the joining process. From there, meetings are arranged through a hacked text or email coded as an invitation to a literary event. The tattoo artist himself screens the attendees. They must show him the tattoo, which is usually on a person's back or hip or wherever else is always obscured by clothing."

"He must have an excellent memory," John said.

"He does. Anyone you send in will need to see this man for the tattoo, and bring an established member to the shop. To vouch for the new member's trustworthiness. In my own case, it was my cousin who facilitated my membership. He died for it."

"We don't have someone. There's our first roadblock," Lestrade said.

"No," Sherlock said. "Viola already knows her contact."

It was Viola's turn to be taken aback.

"Who?"

Sherlock looked none to pleased to be clearing the way for her.

"Your friend," he said. "Ms. Engels."

She was surprised. Engels seemed like the kind of woman who would snap up an inside story like that and splash it all over a front page. She seemed like a big mouth in elegant clothing. John looked equally surprised.

"Her? Did you know about this when Mycroft hired her?" John said.

"Why else would I suggest that my brother employ her? She's in the lowest ranks of the Group and I thought she might be of use. She's insufferable otherwise."

Lestrade turned to Viola with a hopeless half smile.

"Well, Viola," he said. "Welcome to Scotland Yard."

((Thanks for your patience, guys! It seems that my schedule has made uploading more irregular than it has been previously, so I'll probably upload another chapter by next weekend, if not sooner. Again, I appreciate your follows, favorites, and as always, your comments. I love hearing your opinions about what's happening and where you think this might go.))


	14. Chapter 14

The rain pummeled the window and the men were getting ready to leave. Viola worried that it might sneak through the cracks in the frame's paint and soak into the wood. She imagined the window dropping away like soaked bread. The humidity hung in the apartment and made her sweat despite the chill, and she slipped out of the kitchen while the men talked and came back in swamped in a large sweater. It was the same one she wore when she'd first met Sherlock and John: Columbus Society, Class of 2014. It was dumpy, but warm.

Sherlock was speaking and his eyes flickered to her sweater just for a moment.

"- and Mr. Schung will need to stay somewhere secure," he ended.

"Why not here?" Lestrade said. "As good a place any. As long as Viola is volunteering it of course."

Sherlock blinked rapidly. He'd walked right into that one.

"I don't think that-"

"The problem is, you see, that we cannot risk anyone recognizing him," Lestrade said. "We don't have much of a choice. Viola, you understand, don't you?"

She nodded. Hells to the yes she did. She imagined a snippet in her article where she could add some human-interest details. Maybe Schung hummed as he read the paper or liked to sing the shower.

"If Mr. Schung stays here, so will I," Sherlock said.

John did a double take. Viola was surprised, but less so than John seemed. There was already going to be one strange man in her apartment. Why not two? But kitchen could barely fit another mattress, and they would have to push the table into the corner to make room for even one.

"What?" John said, and a bemused laugh bumped under the word.

"It will only be until we resolve this matter," Sherlock said. "You can survive without me for that long, can't you John?"

He gave his roommate a little smile.

"Excuse me," Viola said. "The table and chair barely fit in the kitchen."

"So I'll take the tub. And I assume that the police will pay any extra expenses?"

Lestrade looked displeased, but resigned.

"Just send the recites," Lestrade said.

The men started down the hallway and Viola put a hand on John's shoulder to stop him. It was impossible not to be overheard, but she lowered her voice anyway.

"You've probably noticed that Mr. Schung is sick," she said. "I'm not exactly sure how sick he is, but we can't bring him to the hospital, so I was wondering if you could, y'know, take a look?"

"Sure, of course. I'll come back with Sherlock this afternoon," he said. "Until then, try to get him to sleep and eat something."

Viola imagined John's thoughts when he turned back to her. He probably never imagined giving advice to someone for their terrorist.

"I'll come back with my bags," Sherlock said.

"Good luck, Viola," Lestrade said. "Give me a call if either of this fellows give you problems."

The door shut and Viola locked it behind them. She turned around to see Schung, tall even when slouching in the kitchen doorway.

"Indian food?" she said.

Viola forked a few chunks of tandoori chicken on top of a pile of brown rice and placed it in front of Schung at the table. It was still warm from the take-away containers, and it occurred to her that she could convince the police to pay for a microwave. She picked two forks from the brown bag and handed one to Schung, then used the other to dig into her own plate of chicken tikka. It wasn't until the spicy juices hit her tongue that the hunger hit, and she stood shoveling the orange chicken into her mouth like a slob with beer stains on his wife-beater would chug milk straight from the carton. Which she did regularly (just the milk, sans beer-stained shirt.)

Schung either didn't notice or pretended not to notice as he picked away at his food with the sweat on his forehead and the white of his skin like plastic. He still looked beautiful, sick as he was.

"Could I have a cup of water?" he said.

Viola filled a cup for him from the sink and he swallowed it so fast that water slipped from the corner of his mouth and dripped down his neck. Viola handed him a napkin from the same cupboard where she'd put his gun and he wiped it up from where the trail of water had darkened the shirt. Viola looked away just before he could catch her staring and wondered if Sherlock was going to shower before he came, or whether she should put aside a towel for him. A brief imag shocked through her imagination: His hand wiping a towel around his shoulders and over where the hair clinging wetly to the back of neck.

Viola finished her plate and knotted the plastic take-out bags to shut them behind the fridge door. Where was she going to keep both of them? In the end, it would make more sense to put them both in her room and sleep in the kitchen herself. If they could stand it.

"I've been thinking. Would you mind sharing a room with Sherlock?" she said.

That would make much more sense than trying to fit two mattresses into one kitchen. She would just move her own out and move theirs in.

"Why doesn't he just stay with you in the bedroom?" he said.

Why did she go red so easily? Maybe there was some swooning her future, too. She grabbed the extra fabric of the sweater around her waist and anchored her crossed arms around her middle.

"It's not like that," she said with an awkward smile. Then she explained the affection he'd seen in the months before the kidnapping, from the false compassion to the suggestive touches. Schung's look darkened by measures until he suddenly slammed a fist against his thigh, hissed something in Japanese. A beat passed.

"I wasn't wrong," he said.

"In what way?"

He stared at her as if she couldn't be dumber.

"In what obvious way can you imagine?" he said. "You're not so much more insightful than he is."

She wanted to sit across from him like you would a fortuneteller. What do you see? What are the signs? Tell me, tell me, tell me. But there wasn't a second chair and he seemed to be in a less than congenial mood. Her cell phone rang before she could say anything and she pulled it out of her bag. The name "Tressler" glowed on the outside screen and she flipped it open.

"Where the hell are you?" the voice said.

"I don't think I can come in today," she said.

"Past tense, Wolfe. It's 5 pm."

"I've caught a stomach bug."

There was silence on the other end of the line, and Viola wished she'd gone with a bike fall or deceased relative.

"Are you serious?" he said, although it sounded hypothetical, and then a wiping sound like a palm against the receiver dulled out her "yes", and a muffled voice said: "The new girl's out sick... How am I supposed to know? Ask Michael."

The hand slipped off the phone and his voice came back clear and annoyed: "Okay, well, you should have called that in a while ago."

"Everything okay?" she said.

"We'll manage."

He hung up. Viola looked up and Schung had stood.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"The doorbell rang. I didn't want to interrupt."

She put a hand up to stop him from walking forward.

"I've got it," she said. "You should sit."

Viola opened the door to two plastic-wrapped mattresses. John's face appeared in between them with an apologetic smile. She opened the door as wide as it could go and Sherlock and Watson slid the mattresses into the apartment on their sides.

"Where should we put them?" Watson said.

"One in the bedroom, one in the kitchen," she said. "Sherlock, your new roommate is already in there."

When that'd all been set up, Watson and Sherlock brought in a leather bag full of Sherlock's things and several sets of sheets and blankets. Viola pulled her mattress to the kitchen, along with a pile of clothes, and pushed the whole thing between the back wall and the table. Viola folded the blanket edge just down below her pillow. She looked up, and saw that Watson and Schung now stood in the kitchen doorway.

"Viola asked me to take a look at you," she heard from behind her.

She swiped her bag from the counter and shoveled through the contents until she found the card bent in half at the bottom. Katherine Engels. She went to her bedroom door and pushed it open with a long creak. Sherlock had just shoved his mattress perpendicular to Schung's. His coat lay on top of the plastic, alongside the sheets and blankets in their casing, and his dress-shirt wrinkled as he stood up. He'd unbuttoned his sleeves and folded them up so that they bared his forearms. His skin was pale, and she wondered how such a dark haired man had such fine body hair. She wanted to reach out and feel if there was any there at all. She imagined the tickle on her fingertips and the soft firmness of skin and muscle beneath that would run up until it turned into the red crispness of his shirtsleeves. Viola snapped herself out of it.

"Can I get you anything?" she said.

"A cup of tea. Black."

"I don't have any."

"Coffee, then," he said, and she gave him a hopeless shrug. "What? Not even coffee? Ridiculous."

John appeared beside her in the doorway.

"We finally found someone better at ignoring his body than you, Sherlock," John said. "Schung should sleep and drink as much liquid as possible. He's quite ill, actually. Fever is about 39.5. He should be in hospital."

Grand. It didn't seem to bother Sherlock. He'd already turned back to his bag and now unloaded a set of black pajamas.

"Then he's in luck," Sherlock said. "He has the walking personification of a whole staff of nurses right in this flat. Right down to the sentimental tastelessness."

Viola looked down at her sweater and back up at Sherlock, but he was unpacking what looked like a rechargeable taser. She put a hand on John's arm and guided him to the door.

"I've got the two most charming men in London living in my apartment," she said.

John touched her elbow and nodded towards the hall to indicate that he wanted to speak outside. She closed the door until it was almost completely shut and then held it there.

"Scotland Yard installed a camera for the inside of the apartment and another for the outside hall. They'll be monitoring them at all times," he said. "Lestrade told them to report every time someone leaves and enters."

There went privacy. She sighed.

"Sherlock knows about this? Obviously, right?"

"Obviously," John agreed. "He suggested it."

"There's not a bedroom and bathroom camera in there?" she said, and raised her eyebrows. "John?"

"No. But there are security cameras fixed every window in the flat, so I'd draw the shades," he said.

This brought her back to the other conversation with Sherlock a few weeks earlier. She had since become more conscious of windows.

"Okay," she said. "I'd better get inside and order Mr. Schung into bed like Sherlock expects me to."

Watson lowered his voice and stood with his body half turned to the stair well and his leather shoes planted in the worn carpet.

"I know he's charming, but Schung isn't a friend," he said. "Remember what he's here for."

She gave him an assuring smile that she hoped substituted appropriately for "I know that. I will try not to get us all killed."

"I'll see you soon," she said, and shut the door on the sound of his footsteps in the stairwell.

Sherlock was waiting in front of the closed bedroom door for her.

"I've put Schung to bed. You can call the contact now," he said.

"How'd you get him into bed?"

"Call her, please."

He didn't try to move much as she sidled past, but she underestimated how big the hall was (or maybe she confused height for width) because her butt slid against the wall as she passed and there was still a full half-foot between them. He followed her around to the kitchen and watched from the doorway when she dialed Engel's number into the phone.

It rang, and she turned her back to Sherlock when Engels picked up.

"Hello," the voice said, so cautious that it crossed Viola's mind that it might be a wrong number. She hesitated.

"Hi. Engels?" Viola said, and winced when she used the name that she'd reserved for her thoughts.

"Yes. This is Katherine Engels."

"Viola Wolfe. We met at the conference."

The voice rose into recognition. More familiar, now.

"Oh, Ms. Wolfe," she said. "Viola. Yes, I remember you. How are you? Just fine, I suspect. It's a great day for your industry, isn't it?"

There was that flirtatious tone, full of self-aware charm. Viola smiled and remembered her assignment earlier that morning.

"For everyone but the newbies, maybe," she said. "Although I'm sure that answering the phones will keep me extra busy for the next few weeks. That's what I was calling about actually. I was wondering if I could take you out for coffee? Talk shop."

"It's not my shop anymore, but I'd be glad to," she said. "What about lunch, tomorrow at 1? Cormlow Coffee is right in the center of the city. It's a little out there, but the coffee is nice and strong. See you then?"

"See you then."

Engels hung up and Viola turned to see Sherlock watching her from the doorway. His eye didn't focus on her. They were looking somewhere into the next day, dates and people and places. He was planning it out, thinking about how to direct her actions, and she realized that she was more like Schung than she'd understood. But what other working relationship could she have with Sherlock and John? They were the best in their alternative line of work. A team. For all her strengths, she was still most useful in her convenience and ability to fit into a crowd. That second trait would make her useful as a reporter, if she could mash it into good sense and solid observational skills. A headline to start her off would be great. Scotland Yard should probably give its blessing. She was already writing the Dickens Group exclusive her mind, and she didn't want to screw anyone over. Especially not the police. But she might have to.

"Cormlow Coffee is good," Sherlock said. "Good enough."

So he'd heard all that. Viola went to her phone settings and lowered the cell volume. The digitalized numbers said 9:00 pm. It was dark outside, and the light bulbs were some cheap leftovers from the last tenants. They were a weak and warm yellow, like candlelight, and it was a problem because Viola needed to squint to read at night. Usually she just pulled out the handy laptop and went to bed with the blue light of the screen still pulsing at the back of her eyelids. But now that she'd seen how dark it was outside, she suddenly felt exhausted. All she wanted to do was crumple down onto the mattress behind her like a puppet with its strings suddenly released.

"Leftovers?" she offered.

But Sherlock must have sensed her exhaustion.

"I ate. I'll leave you to sleep."

She listened to his shoes on the wood and then the soft opening and shutting of the door. She went through her routine: brushed her teeth, set her alarm clock. Then she slipped under the mattress blanket, turned over onto her back and feel asleep.

Viola woke up in the middle of the night and felt along the floor for her cell phone. Her fingers slipped across cold wood and hit the plastic cover. 3:00 am. Her bladder was full to bursting. No wonder she was awake. She pushed herself up with a hand on the wall and stumbled bare-foot towards the bathroom. Boxers and a t-shirt left her body to the refrigerator of the room and her skin erupted in goose bumps.

She flicked the kitchen light on and bounced off the doorframe in a failed attempt to make a smooth right turn towards the bathroom. That happened sometimes. At night, the apartment was just a collection of edges to bump into. Viola twisted the bathroom doorknob and pushed with her full weight at her shoulder. That was a mistake.

The door swung open with the acceleration of a wrecking ball and she collapsed under her own force into a slippery, light filled space of water and humidity and one tall man with a towel grasped around his waist. She looked up at Sherlock and the dim lighting was bright enough to hurt her eyes, and she couldn't see much.

It was a tiny bathroom. The toilet, sink, and standing shower all crowded in on each other and Sherlock stood in the very center of them all with one thigh just brushing the sink edge and one foot pressed up against the shower wall. She scrambled up to her feet, lost balance, and stumbled back against the wall. He was so naked, and he was looking at her with utter surprise. Her eyes flicked to his chest. 'No, stop,' she told herself. But her eyes had a mind of their own. They trailed down his neck, down along the arm holding the towel. Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could see that fine black hair covered his chest, like he'd once shaved but had recently stopped. It surprised her to know that he'd cared at some point, but it shouldn't have, since he paid such close attention to appearing professional in his everyday wardrobe. Her face burned. 'Argh, he's watching you,' she said. 'Say something appropriate. At least apologetic.'

"I - I - erm," she stammered.

'Oh GOD no, not that. That was the worst thing to say. Produce words, at least. He's looking at you like you're crazy.' Her lungs felt like a cylinder pump pushed down to zero oxygen and 100% pressure and she was certain that she could feel exactly where all the air was stuck. She focused for a moment and imagined the furthest thing from the man in front of her. Her mother's glasses. Rectangular lenses framed in dark blue. Slowly, the breath squeezed back into her lungs and the pressure released. He'd recovered too. By then, his face had adopted it familiar stoicism.

"Would you mind leaving so that I can get dressed?" he said.

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course," she said, and crept along the corner into the hall to avoid touching him. She shut the door a little too loudly and apologized out loud to no one in particular.

She switched the kitchen light off and sat down on her mattress in the dark with her legs crossed and stared into the darkness in red-faced embarrassment. The bathroom door opened a minute later and Sherlock's bare feet creaked against the wood. He paused in the hall and turned towards the kitchen door, stood there for a second with one side cast in light from the bathroom: grey t-shirt spotted dark with water and blue pajama bottoms. She was sure he could see her sitting there, but then he just reached out and turned off the bathroom light and walked down the hall. The sound of the bedroom door shutting released something tight and tense in her limbs, but didn't give her any more peace of mind.

The room was hotter than hell. She lay down with the blanket pushed under her feet and couldn't fall asleep for another hour.

_Sherlock and Engels stood side by side against a white wall. In their hands were round white teacups filled with coffee dark as ink. Darker than their clothes: him in a black on black suit, her in a black gown. Then his arm snaked around her waist and pulled her towards his long, long body, and she understood completely that they were both going to screw her over like they screwed each other in hot, beautiful sweating tangles of white limbs and soft curves..._

_ And he was walking towards her from the white wall with only a black towel tucked around his waist and a universe of white. No shadows marked that he walked, and it seemed that he floated towards her. He seemed to grow closer to closer on a moving walkway with his bear chest glowing white like a bike reflector and his eyes pale and flat and alien. He stood in front of her and leaned down with his expressionless face and she closed her eyes, and his lips were so soft and smooth brushing against hers without ever really pressing down. Until they did and then she felt his teeth bard against her lips and she felt his breath tickle her ear: "I planned everything."_

_ I planned everything._

_ I planned everything_

((It's a late update, but it's longer than usual! I hope you enjoyed the Sherlock-Viola action. The hormones. Oh, the hormones. Many thanks for the follows, favorites, and of course, the comments. I appreciate them a great deal.))


	15. Chapter 15

Viola woke up with the shout still in her ear and flailed her arm out to push Sherlock back. Her hand struck air, but it took her a moment to realize why. She opened her eyes and recognized the re-sealed crack in the ceiling. No one was in the kitchen. Only her and the salty sweat smell and the t-shirt damp under the arms. She kicked her leg from the tangle of sheet and wiped the drops back from her forehead towards her hair. She stared into the blue-black darkness of early morning and waited for the tremor in her hands to stop. It was 5 am.

She went through the morning routine of brushing her teeth and hair, but the thought of food nauseated her. It felt like she'd injected an overdose of caffeine into her bloodstream, and she couldn't imagine facing Sherlock and Schung like a ball of static anxiety. Not when they both played it so dark and cool. It occurred to her that a healthy sweat might shake away the adrenaline, and it was about time that she used her gym membership. She'd joined a dumpy little place a few blocks from the flat her first week and the over-bright lighting warned her away, but the early hours and cheap price lured her into a membership. She reminded herself of these benefits when she finally stood in front of the building with her coat tied around her waist and her gym bag in hand. It was a single room above a crusty barbershop, and both places were open even at 5 am in the morning. Not populated, no, but open, yes.

An exhausted looking woman was busy sweeping dust out the barbershop door and didn't look up when Viola rang the doorbell by the metal door that led up to the apartments. Someone buzzed her in and Viola trudged up to the first flight of stairs. A man stood at the top. She remembered him from signing up, and that day he looked swollen in a muscle t-shirt and equally puffy smile. He had one of those fleshy faces that swallowed up tiny mouths and eyes. She'd forgotten all of that, but not his tattoos. Obviously prison tattoos in characteristic black ink and faded from age. There was a dagger on his neck dripping two drops of black blood, a bull on his right arm (although now she could only see the hooves below the sleeve), a crucifix on his left forearm, and what looked like a portrait of either Golem or a small boy.

"How doing, dear?" the man said, and his Russian accent pulled the vowels up short and rattled the Rs towards the back of his throat.

She mustered a smile and pulled her membership card from her wallet. It was really just the gym's business card marked in red pen with a little triangular symbol, and the man barely glanced at it.

"My name is Alexander," he said. "I will give you tour."

There were two elliptical, two running machines, a section for weights, etc, but also a one-person bathroom with a shower. It had the same fluorescent lighting as the rest of the gym, but it looked clean.

"You can put your things in this lockers. Free," the man said, and nodded towards the double row of green lockers next to the bathroom door. "You like radio music?"

She shook her head no, said that she had an ipod, and that was where their communication ended for the day. For the next hour and a half, he stayed perched on his metal chair by the door like a fat pigeon and read a novel with rapt attention. Unless she was wrong about the cover art, it was the Russian translation of Fifty Shades of Gray.

None of the equipment collapsed on her, and she felt that satisfying absence of tension when she lugged herself off to the showers. She would have saved herself navigating the sad little bathroom, but hers was significantly smaller and in closer proximity to more men. Her skin burned hot, and the cold water was a relief at first, but the water pressure was weak and her body seemed to warm the streams of water by the time they reached her feet. She walked out the gym ten minutes later, still red-faced and feverish from the workout, and felt good enough to grab some food. The nightmare was just that now.

It had started to rain by the time she'd left the building, but it was 8 am and more people were out and about. Viola hadn't brought an umbrella and ducked into a diner where she sat down and ordered toast and orange juice. Coffee was not even an option. Like she needed that. Right.

She ate and drank with the same enthusiasm that she'd attacked pancakes with as a kid and eavesdropped on the couple behind her talk about some drama that happened to a friend at some party. It was 10:30 am and an omelet and a second glass of juice later when she walked home. When she opened her apartment door, she almost turned right around and closed it behind her again. She could see straight through the hall into the kitchen, and that was not her flat. There were black wood counters, a slick microwave, and several chairs peaked around the corner. And there were a group of people milling around the hallway and going from room to room, from movers in jean overalls, to the Detective Inspector himself who stood with Sherlock in front of the bathroom. A mover walked past them and they flattened their shoulders against the wall to let him pass.

"What the fuuuuck," Viola trailed off under her breath.

Lestrade turned around to see who'd arrived and raised his eyebrows in exasperation when he saw her.

"Where've _you_ been?" he said.

She ignored him to peer down the hallway again into the kitchen. That microwave. So. Shiny. She was too busy assuming that all this was a gift from Scotland Yard to feel berated. They couldn't barge in without her permission and then charge her too, so the bill for all these new furnishings would necessarily land on the government's doorstep. And just like that, this whole Schung ordeal came with a paycheck. This was what she'd fantasized about as a kid when she'd watched Snow White and Cinderella and those other Disney classics. It was like the forest animals had gathered together to transform her scraggly flat into a pretty princess. It was like a host of movers had galloped into her life on their metal steeds and swept her crappy flat away into the sunset. It was like -

"Excuse me," Lestrade interrupted sharply, and that snapped out of it.

"Gym," she spoke up, "I was at the gym."

She grinned at a mover as he stepped past her to get at the door and he scanned her as if he could locate the source of mental damage in her clothing.

"You can't run off like that without telling anyone," Lestrade said. "I thought that was implied. For god's sake, close the door!"

Viola waited for another mover, this one thin and white-haired, to sidle past her before shutting the door at his back. She thought that was all the men could fit, but another guy in overalls materialized in the kitchen door with a round black lamp. It looked modern. Possibly expensive.

"Where do you want this?" the mover said to no one is particular.

"The desk," Sherlock said.

The mover carried the lamp across into the bedroom and Viola stared after him.

"The what?" she said. "The desk?"

She hurried over to the bedroom door. They'd moved in an elegant navigator desk with three draws lined side by side in a thin top and striped legs, a little bit vintage and a little bit modern.

"That'll be all?" the mover's voice said from behind her.

She was too distracted in looking by the wooden chair and its plaid cushions to hear the reply, but someone must have given him permission to go, because the door closed a few moments later. It was a beautiful desk and it stood out against the two mattresses with their white covers, which were both as simple as squatters' beds (for good reason.) It stood out against Sherlock's bed most of all, with the pillow in the middle of the crumpled covers and the sheets pulled up to show the white quilted pattern on the mattress beneath it. Schung had pulled out his blanket and folded the edge underneath the pillow, neat as could be.

"Come into the kitchen for a second," Lestrade said, and when Viola and Sherlock both stood on the tile, she tried not to grin goofily at the three extra wooden chairs added to the table. Then Lestrade swung the door closed behind them.

"There's a fucking door," Viola cried, and jabbed a finger at the perfectly functional rectangle of wood that had just swung into the doorway.

"Sherlock seemed to think that it was a necessary addition," Lestrade said, and gave Sherlock a look that told Viola all she needed to know about his role in the redecoration. He was, apparently, her fairy godfather. "Can we all sit, please? What are the new chairs for otherwise?"

Viola looked at Sherlock to thank him, but he was purposefully averting his face from hers and towards Lestrade. The DI's act of sitting himself down in the chair had suddenly become relevant to his life. Viola dropped the gracious smile she'd prepared to give him and dismissed her gratefulness, which he did not seem to want. Whatever. She had a door. In fact, there was a knock on it at that moment, and Lestrade waved a hand as if the person on the other side could see it.

"Step on through, Mr. Schung," he said.

Funny how they could redress her whole apartment and still not bring Schung a new set of clothes. He looked much healthier without the sweat (or at least clean,) but his body wanted more now that it'd sampled a good night's rest. His eyelids could barely hold themselves open, and blue marked the space around his eyes like bruises, but even then, he was handsome.

The tension heightened as soon as the door swung shut behind them. Sherlock stiffened, and Lestrade seemed only more uncomfortable when he observed Sherlock's clear dislike. And that just made Viola feel ashamed, because she quite liked Schung and realized that it had only taken a few shows of trust and a bit of flirting to convert her to the Schung side. No wonder Sherlock was so reluctant to trust her alone with him.

"Please sit," Lestrade repeated, partly for Schung's benefit and partly because all of them were standing awkwardly around him. They each took chairs, and Sherlock and Viola and Lestrade all ended up just far enough from Schung to make it seem like they'd quietly grouped into the opposite side of the kitchen.

The meeting was brief. Lestrade advised Viola to plant her support of the Dickens philosophy, but not to hint too much towards her goal of membership, and Schung explained the anarchist leanings: belief in the established government's misguided ways and the need for carefully orchestrated violence to correct them. Viola liked to think she'd remember every detail, but doubted that she would.

"They're not much different from the early American founders' ideas," Schung concluded. "Liberty or death."

"Did you see yourself as a revolutionary when you were a member?"

"Me? No. But the idealists do," he said with a thin smile that was more tired than arch. "It's an easy identity to choose when the other option is terrorist. It's all for the cause, they say. My motivations were less noble, you already know. I was never an idealist. I remember sitting down on the stool in the tattoo, just thinking of how much money it would earn me for the rest of my life. I'd hoped."

"Did you choose the quote yourself?" Viola said.

"I'm sure the tattooist could open a book and pluck one out, but I don't think you'd prefer that," he said. "It needs to be unique. Having the same line as another member would be like having the National Insurance number."

"The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as 'The Styles Case' has now somewhat subsided," Sherlock said. "It's from the Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, 1920. Choose the first part. You'll only need a fragment."

Viola was tempted to believe that he was speaking from sentimentality or malice, but the line was appropriately ambiguous and still from one of her favorite authors - it was just good, objective advice. That idiot.

"There are tattoos of Edward Cullen's face that have more meaning than that," she said.

"Would anyone like to volunteer a better idea?" Sherlock said, and scanned the room although he knew well enough that no one would.

"Seems secure, at least," Lestrade said. "No one else will have it."

'For good reason,' Viola thought. She nodded and faked a smile that Lestrade did not see because in that moment his cell beeped through his jacket pocket and he flipped it open, stood with his eyes still on the screen.

"Oh, hell. I've got to go, Sherlock," he said. "You'll handle the rest, yes? Good luck, Viola. I'll ring later tonight."

He showed himself to the door and Schung got to his feet as soon as it slammed shut behind him. He circled around and passed Sherlock without glancing at him.

"That's all right," Sherlock said when Schung had passed. "We'll no longer be needing you." But the door had already closed and Sherlock was trying not to look as if Schung had annoyed him.

"What now?" Viola said.

"Change," he said, and nodded at her outfit.

"Oh," she said in exaggerated naïveté and plucked at her gym shirt. "You don't think I should go dressed in this? Why, Mr. Holmes. I simply can't function without you."

He gave her a flat look.

"Thank you very much for that. Now change, if you please."

She gave him a mock frown and went to her room, where Mr. Schung was reading on his mattress. He didn't say anything while she fuddled through her drawers and gathered a pile of clothes to take to the bathroom. She'd rather change there than ask Sherlock to get out of the kitchen. She wondered how he and Schung stood each other. What did they do in there? Maybe duels to first blood. Mud wrestling, probably.

She dressed to avoid Sherlock's flack: Dark blue blouse with a flouncy ribbon at the neck, dark blue jeans, black leather boots, and army jacket. The blouse made her feel like a pirate, but it was a necessary formal addition. Sherlock gave her a critical once-over when she pushed into the kitchen to snatch her bag from the counter, but did not see anything worthy of mention. Or maybe it just wasn't worth it at that point.

"I'm going to go now," she said, but it came out like a question.

"You should," he said.

* * *

Cromlow scented the whole cross street with rich coffee aroma, and Viola found it by smell before sight. She was all too glad that the smell belonged to the cafe, because it needed the extra charm. The place was small, all the whites needed bleaching and oak chairs and tables took up most of the space. On top of which, the floor tilted slightly to the left and made Viola feel as if she'd just had a few beers.

Engels sat under a signed picture of the prime minister (definitely fake) and wore a tight burgundy dress and cropped grey jacket. She half-rose out of the chair with her knees pressed together when Viola approached. They shook hands and only Engels' wide smile prevented it from feeling like a business meeting.

"It's wonderful to see you again, Viola," she said.

There was already an empty coffee cup in front of her with a creased half-moon of pink lipstick on the edge.

"I hope you haven't been waiting for a long time," Viola said. "Can I get you another coffee?"

Engels beamed and brushed the hair away from her face.

"That'd be great," she said, and the waitress must have been listening, because she came right over. A beige full-body apron mostly obscured her sweate rand jeans. She was small. It was large. Viola ordered their coffee and Viola could hear the hiss of the coffee machine in the background.

"Well, thank you," Engels said. "I only have my lunch hour to give to you, but it's always nice to be bought a cup of coffee. What did you want to discuss first?"

They talked shop for a while. The annoyance of entry-position deskwork, the necessity of a hard-edged approach in order to rise, the injustice of the status quo and ruling class on a minor scale - which is where Viola jabbed her pike.

"You can't blame the office environment, really," Viola said. "It's just what always happens with administrations. You put the power into the hands of a few men for too long, and they'll abuse it. What I'd like to do to people like Tressler is stop them from handing down the petty jobs. Have him answer a few phone calls. I may be applying my own experiences too broadly, but the same hierarchy in a publication office applies to the hierarchy in an office of the American government. It goes from the senators' offices to the President's office. You have these bigwig politicians who can only enter their positions because their fathers are important - senators, presidents, or just richer than most people in history have ever been - and then no one can ever overtake them. Money breeds money."

Viola felt a thrill go down her spine. She'd practically convinced herself, and she'd been so involved in her speech that she hadn't noticed the waitress had come with two new coffees. Engels looked across at her with a smile. It wasn't flirtatious or sly or coy. This was genuine, and it spread up to her eyes in a way that at last made her look like a normal person and not a walking embodiment of ambition.

"Were you disappointed to leave America and find that you'd moved into a similar shit show?" she said, and sipped at her coffee with long fingers and manicured nails. Viola's own were uneven and frayed at points where she'd dug at them with her thumbnail.

"Not to get on my soapbox, but government is troubled as an institution," Viola said, and laughed as if she could barely believe the discussion. "I don't usually spout off like this, but I just got out of college, you know. I don't have any more outlets. They used to warn new members about me when I was on the debate team."

Engels threw back her head and let out a bark of a laugh that Viola was surprised to hear come from her. She came back down with a grin.

"I used to be active on campus too. I was a member of the SCPC at London College. The Student Council of People's Choice. Oh, we were bad," she said, gave a wicked smile. "We were little tricksters."

"Who did you trick?"

Engels lowered her voice only enough to show that she was aware of its volume, but she clearly didn't think anyone was listening. There was no one in the cafe, and the waitress had disappeared into the kitchen.

"You know the Downing Street bombing in 2010?"

Viola had read about it. It'd been a small bomb set off during a cabinet meeting that had injured all but one or two ministers. More than anything else, it'd been a scare tactic turned tragic. Viola raised her eyebrows and mimed impressed surprise, tilted her head down as if to seek a confirmation. Engels just answered with a smile that glowed, "Yes, yes, I was involved. That was me and mine." And then viola actually did feel sick.

She leaned back and folded her arms across her chest.

"Wow, you really did get things done," she said, and grinned. They smiled at each other and shared a moment of equal values that Viola did not feel at all. Engels suddenly mouthed a silent "oh," and she checked her delicate silver wristwatch.

"I have to get to work," she said, and slid out from the booth. "I'd take the extra half-hour usually, but Mr. Holmes is a beast about timeliness."

Viola stood and Engels squeezed her into a friendly hug.

"Maybe we should form a debate club of our own," Viola joked, and Engels smiled at her.

""We should talk more about that. What about a nice long dinner tomorrow night?"

Viola tried to hold down the feeling of triumph.

"Sounds great."

They agreed to work out the time and place later that night, and Engels rushed to work.

* * *

Viola fought her bag to find her keys on the way up the stairs to her flat, and finally felt them in the inner lining that had come unstitched along the edge of the bag. This either meant that she would have to invest in a new bag or come to terms with a third, gaping pocket. Maybe she could convince Scotland Yard to invest in a bag like they had in a desk and a door and a microwave. She seriously considered bringing it up right after she bragged about her success with Engels so far, and that was the thought in her mind when she unlocked her front door.

She was about to holler out "Success," or something equally loud and triumphant, but swallowed whatever it would've been when a hand clamped over her mouth. Someone dragged her inside and drove her so hard against the door that she and it slammed together back into the frame with a thundering clap of wood on wood.

((Hey, folks! Sorry for the major delay. I like to get a head start and go back to iron out plot holes, edit, etc. I've been trying to write the rest of the story before my school year starts again and finishing chapters becomes a lot less likely after that point. Thanks for the reads and the comments! Much appreciated, as always. And if you've been lurking, please try to let me know what you think, even if it's only a little line. It helps me so much to know that you're reading and forming opinions and looking forward to the next chapter. Many thanks!

Oh, and I know some writers around here are merciful and avoid cliff-hangers at all costs. I am not one of those kind-hearted souls. Muahahaha.))


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